Climate change threatens farm animals: Italian researchers are using genomics to try to save them
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Loading... - Claire James
- 06 Oct 2022
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Researchers of Università Cattolica, Piacenza, are searching for genes to make cattle and sheep breeds resistant to climate change, heat waves and drought: it is at risk the very survival of many local breeds, with huge economic losses for the production chain, while the arrival of new diseases can seriously affect cattle.
At the Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Sciences headed by Prof. Marco Trevisan, the Department of Animal, Nutrition and Food Sciences—DiANA, directed by Professor Francesco Masoero studies the genetics of adaptation. The geneticists, coordinated by Prof. Paolo Ajmone Marsan and involving Prof. Riccardo Negrini, Prof. Licia Colli and a large group of young doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, recently published a review in the journal Animals about livestock adaptation to climate change.
Production loss due to climate change
"Production loss due to heat depends on environmental conditions, as assessed by the temperature/humidity index (THI)," explains Professor Ajmone Marsan. Several studies revealed worrying estimates of the order of millions of euros in direct costs (loss of production) and indirect costs (cost of veterinary interventions, fodder, etc.).
Prof. Trevisan points out that a paper, published this year in The Lancet Planetary Health, estimates the loss of global production from heat stress at something like $40 billion a year by the end of the century (ranging from a low of $34 to a high of $45), equivalent to about 10 percent of the 2005 value of meat and milk.
"Heat stress is deleterious to all animal species," Professor Negrini explains, "particularly for ruminants and high-producing dairy cattle, as well as our breeds. Unfortunately, climate projections indicate that summer weather in our country will be increasingly dry and hot. That will increase stress in animals, despite shading, ventilation, sprinkling of water and possible conditioning." Read More…
