Solutions for Breeding Healthy and Efficient Animals: Novel Phenotypes and Omics Approaches for Improving Yield and Quality of Animal Products

Dear Colleagues,

Modern animal breeding schemes should be designed to improve functional traits and increase animal efficiency in order to reduce the environmental footprint of animal production. Traits such as health, welfare, longevity, feed efficiency and methane emission are some examples. Often, these traits are difficult to measure or present complex genetic background. In many cases, they may exhibit low heritabilities, which further hamper the achievable selection response. However, the recent availability of the whole genome sequencing and SNP data has opened new scenarios and expedited their genetic progress. Moreover, the availability of portable devices and sensors allows one access to automatic data recordings but requires ad hoc methodologies to analyze them (such as multivariate statistics, machine learning approach, etc.). These new records have made registering and improving complex phenotypes, i.e., resilience and environmental footprint, possible. The latter is of growing interest, as can be seen from the increased attention of consumers to these aspects. This Special Issue aims to collect contributions that use “omic” data, innovative phenotypes and their proxies or new methodologies to face the old and new challenges of animal breeding.

Prof. Dr. Giustino Gaspa
Dr. Fabio Correddu
Dr. Alberto Cesarani
Guest Editors

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