More robust animals: a major challenge for sustainable development of livestock production implying the blossoming of fine and highthroughput

Abstract

The major challenge of animal phenotyping is to acquire systemic knowledge of farm animal robustness. This will allow responding to a double objective in terms of exploiting the variability of animal aptitudes: selection for major objectives in order to improve efficiency and robustness of genotypes and precision farming that exploits individual variability of animals for an improved resilience on the herd level or to improve the management for a specific genotype. Two major challenges of our knowledge exist which are interdependent and common to all animal breeding, and which must be met in order to improve animal robustness.  he first is understanding and predicting the compromise amongst vital functions. By this we mean understanding how priority changes are made under specific limited resources. The second is understanding and exploiting the temporal aspects of robustness during an animal’s life in order to allow the animal to maintain its level of performance under different environments without compromising its reproduction, health or welfare. Attaining these objectives requires accomplishing the following: i) defining complex phenotypes through the integration of data obtained on the molecular or tissular scales of an animal or of one of its functions; ii) developing high-throughput technologies to characterize at a lower cost and the most precisely as possible the largest number of animals; iii) developing important data bases and reliable methods and computing tools necessary for the treatment of information for modeling and predictive biology.