Climate Change Adaptation - Climate Resilient Agriculture for Ensuring Food Security - page 255

(1) identifying and strengthening local breeds
that have adapted to local climatic stress and
feed sources and (2) improving local genetics
through cross-breeding with heat- and disease-
tolerant breeds.
There are three main approaches to selective
breeding:

resistant to the impacts of climate change, such
as sudden changes in temperature, prolonged
droughts, or the appearance of new diseases. It
can reduce mortality rates, increase fertility rates,
and can also be used to improve the quality of
livestock products such as milk and fi ber. As a
result, livestock producers are at a lower risk
from losing animals to climate change impacts,
and they are also able to diversify their income-
generating activities by capitalizing on higher-
quality dairy or fi ber production.

12.6.4.1 Outcrossing
Mating two animals that are unrelated for at least
4-6 generations back is called an outcross. This
method works best when the genetic variation for
a trait is high. When dominant genes are the
desirable ones, outcrossing works perfectly well.
One of the best advantages of outcrossing is that
it hides detrimental traits by keeping them
recessive. Outcrossing improves fi tness traits
such as reproductive ability, milk production, kid
survivability, and longevity.

12.6.4.4 Advantages
The specifi c advantages of selective breeding
through controlled mating include low input and
maintenance costs once the strategy is estab-
lished and permanence and consistency of
effect. In addition, controlled mating can pre-
serve local and rare breeds that could be lost as
a result of climate change-related disease
epidemics. 12.6.4.2 Linebreeding

Linebreeding involves mating-related animals
like half brother/half sister, cousins, aunt/nephew,
and other more distant relationships. This is
usually done to capitalize on a common outstand-
ing ancestor who appears in recent generations of
the pedigree. There is a higher degree of unifor-
mity with linebreeding than in outcrossing and a
reduced possibility of harmful genetic defects
than inbreeding.

12.6.4.5 Disadvantages
One of the main limitations of this technology is
that selective breeding of certain genes can run
the risk of reducing or removing other genes
from the overall pool, a process which is irrevers-
ible. This can create new weaknesses among ani-
mals, particularly with the emergence of a new
pest or disease. Depending on the animal traits
chosen, selective breeding may not always lead
to higher productivity rates.

12.6.4.3 Inbreeding
This breeding method involved mating directly
related animals, like mother/son, father/daughter,
and full brother/full sister (full siblings). This
method is used generally to create uniformity and
prepotency (the ability of this process to con-
tinue) and to force out latent weaknesses from the
gene pool. However, recessive genes are more of
a factor than dominant genes in genetic faults, so
there is a high risk producing kids with problems.
Inbreeding reduces the pool of available genes
and can cause some lines to become extinct.
Fitness traits are especially at risk with this
breeding scheme.
Selective breeding through controlled mating
enables farmers to breed animals that are more

12.6.5 Early Warning Systems
and Insurance

The use of weather information to assist rural
communities in managing the risks associated
with rainfall variability is a potentially effective
(preventative) option for climate change adapta-
tion. Livestock insurance schemes that are
weather indexed (i.e., policy holders are paid in
response to “trigger events” such as abnormal
rainfall or high local animal mortality rates) may
also be effective where preventative measures fail
(Skees and Enkh-Amgala 2002 ).