Knowledge Centre – NordGen Farm Animals

The genetic diversity that our Nordic native farm animal breeds carry is invaluable. Over hundreds of years, they have developed desirable traits that make them robust and well adapted to the Nordic climate and way of life. Native breeds have a wider genetic base than commercial breeds and great potential for future food production in a sustainable way. For example, research shows that milk from Nordic native cattle breeds is among the best in the world when it comes to cheesemaking, and also contain valuable nutrients that could be used to develop bioactive food components. If further investigated, the genetic diversity of the native breeds can help adapt the Nordic agriculture to the needs of the market, climate change and new production systems. However, many of the about 140 farm animal breeds native to the Nordic countries are today at risk of becoming endangered. NordGen Farm Animals is working to reverse that trend. 

During 2022, NordGen Farm Animals has worked in several projects, networks and increased communications on its activities and established several networks that serve as a platform for discussing joint research applications and projects. The increased communication and knowledge sharing with stakeholders supports the current strategic goal to proactively strengthen NordGen as a Nordic knowledge center for genetic resources. 

NordGen has organised together with FAO a series of global webinars based on the FAO guidelines “Innovations in cryoconservation of animal genetic resources”. The dozen of webinars were organized during 2022 in collaboration with FAO and the authors involved in the FAO guidelines. The recordings of the webinars can be found here.

 

Initially, NordGen compiled the newest information on cryoconservation resulted from the EU HORIZON project ‘IMAGE Innovative management of Animal genetic resources’. Thereafter NordGen coordinated processing of the material as an FAO publication. These FAO guidelines included an overview of technical details, germplasm types, principles from a biological perspective, and from different species. It also had up-to-date information on health interventions, data management, legal issues, and capacity building. The webinars complemented the collaboration between FAO and NordGen in revising the FAO cryoconservation guidelines.

In 2022, NordGen Farm Animals continued the ambitious task of creating portraits of all the Nordic native animal breeds. The portraits contain information about each breed and its current status and are being written with support from the different breeding organizations in the Nordic countries. As we have some 140 different animal breeds this is a time-consuming and resource demanding project, but it fills a void and constitute information asked for as there is no other place where information about our Nordic native animal breeds can be found all in one place. During 2022, NordGen published the story of the Nordic Brown bee, Finnish Native Chicken, Norwegian Nordland/Lyngen horse and Eastern Finncattle on their website.

 

The project utilized an innovative approach for combining several academic disciplines to give us a more nuanced picture of the history, culture and heritage of the mountain cattle breeds in the northern parts of Finland, Norway and Sweden. The results can be used, for example, in achieving more attention, and making safeguarding decisions for the endangered breeds.

The project was running 2019-2022 and has reached many relevant conclusions and managed to disseminate information about the cattle breeds to the different target groups. The project, which is financed by Interreg Nord, Lapin liitto and Region Norrbotten, is carried out in Nordic co-operation between universities, companies and breeding organisations in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Read more in Projects.

In 2022, The NordFrost Network was started with two seminars. The network includes a broad group of stakeholders enabling people from different backgrounds to meet, share experiences and create joint efforts to the conservation of native farm animal and fish breeds. This will contribute to Nordic food security and self-sufficiency, as well as conserving the unique biodiversity of the numerous native breeds found in the Nordic region. Read more in Projects.

NordGen arranged the first Native Horse Network meeting in November 2019 in Oslo, Norway, with participants from the Nordic countries and Lithuania.  Since then, the network has had meetings online due to covid-19. The network has been successful and one of the results from the network is the project for genomic characterization of the Nordic Native Horse breeds (Project NaNo Horse).

Through an ERFP ad-hoc action (European Regional Focal Point for Animal Genetic Resources) - we expanded to a new and broader network in 2022 – The Network for native horse breeds in the Baltic Sea region and Northern Europe. This network had a physical meeting in Alnarp, Sweden on November 18-19, 2022.

The goal of the network is focused on the improvement of the management of endangered native horse breeds and contributes to the:

• Conservation and sustainable use of Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR)

• Strengthen collaboration within the European Region searching new regional projects, research, workshops, and knowledge exchange of good practice on national programs.

In 2022 NordGen Farm animals in collaboration with SLU, NMBU and the Norwegian Horse Center started the project “Genomic Characterization as a Tool Towards Sustainable Breeding of the Nordic Native Horse Breeds” (NaNo Horse) to characterize the native Nordic horse breeds at a genomic level through whole-genome sequence DNA. The native Nordic horse breeds are an important genetic resource, not only due to their cultural heritage, but also due to their potential unique genetics that may prove to be valuable for the horse breeding sector, and more widely, to society. Read more in Projects.

NordGen Farm Animals is a service and knowledge centre working to conserve and promote sustainable management of the animal genetic resources in the Nordic region.  Contributing to the Nordic countries’ own work by promoting the genetic, economic, cultural, historical and social values that come with a wide variety of different animals in Nordic agriculture.

NordGen Farm Animals’ activities are providing tools and advice to preserve the genetic variation in living populations (in situ) but also to establish cryo-storage of genetic material (ex situ). Through a variety of projects, NordGen Farm Animals are working to initiate research and development projects related to categorization, conservation, management and sustainable use of animal genetic resources.

NordGen Farm Animals also organizes workshops, seminars and courses for various Nordic stakeholders and promotes good collaboration between them. Actively distributes information about animal genetic resources and partake in international networks. Works to promote sustainable breeding practices and good principles for fair trade in animal genetic material.