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Topical Review: Interaction of Breeding and Nutrition | ||
| Number 45 | |||
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The full paper was presented by Professor Jean Boyazoglu, Executive Vice-President of EAAP at the International Symposium on "Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition", Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. 20 - 22 April 2000. The Abstract and Conclusions are presented here. The full paper was published: Boyazoglu, Jean. Asian-Aus. J. Anim. Sci. 2000. Vol. 13, Special Issue: 7-11.
Animal products of meat, milk eggs, wool hair, etc. must be adapted today to the needs of both consumers and the transforming agro-industry. This is in many cases a contradiction in itself as the type and composition of the products requested by these two groups of clients/users are different in many cases. In both ruminants and monogastric nutrition can modify substantially the characteristics of the animal products in organoleptic, technological, gustative or dietetic terms.
The metabolic response, and structural follow-up to over-feeding, physiological or qualitative under-feeding, unbalanced diets and periodicity of feeding have a direct effect on the quantity and quality of lipids and muscling and can be translated into energy wastes or shortages; thus producing uneconomic livestock production systems.
The adaptability of livestock to nutritional stress - both quantitative and qualitative - and the metabolic response to feeding levels and variability of diets depends, among other things, on the animal species and characteristics of the population under consideration. Although relatively little work has been done to explain the relationship between nutrition and genetics, there is sufficient and clear indication that genetic determinism is certainly involved.
In the past genetics and nutrition, selection and feed conversion efficiency have too often been considered by scientists as distant and even competing systems in affecting the development of an individual: Nature versus Nurture. Today we know that it is the interaction of genes and dietary nutrients along with environmental factors that determine the phenotype and the development of an organism (Simopoulos, 1999). This has been observed with (Hardy, 1999) and with humans (Simopoulos, 1999) and from ruminants (Archer et al, 1999) to monogastric (Nesheim, 1975). A large number of experiments particularly with pigs and poultry show that "within" breeds or homogenous populations feed conversion acts as a classical polygenic character with medium heritability; whereas "between" breeds meaningful genetic variability also exists (Ollivier and Henry, 1978). Since the early 1970s there has been a growing indication of genotype-nutrition interaction with traits including energy utilisation, feed consumption efficiency for various productivity characteristics such as growth performance, carcass and milk composition etc. and straight energy and nitrogen metabolism. We now have evidence of genetic variation in nutrient requirements and even appetite regulation and feeding behaviour (Pym, 1990).
The author expresses his appreciation in assembling bibliographic material to INRA colleagues in France: Louis Ollivier, Pierre Sellier, Gilles Renaud, André Bordas.
Archer J.A., Richardson E.C., Herd R.M. and Arthur P.F., 1999. Potential for selection to improve efficiency of feed use in beef cattle: a review. Aust. J. Agric. Res., 50:147-161.
Hardy R.W., 1999. Collaborative opportunities between fish nutrition and other disciplines in aquaculture: an overview. Aquaculture, 177:217-230.
Nesheim, M.C., 1975. Genetic variation in nutritional requirements of animals. Nat. Acad. Sci., Washington (USA).
Ollivier L. and Henry Y., 1978. Variations génétiques de l'efficacité alimentaire chez le porc en croissance: revue bibliographique. Ann-Génét. Sél. Anim., 10: 99-124.
Pym R.A.E., 1990, Nutritional genetics. In poultry breeding and genetics, Elsevier, Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Simopoulos A.O., 1999. Genetic variation and nutrition. Nutrition Reviews, 57, (5): 510-519.
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