Farm animal genetic and genomic resources from an agroecological perspective

Agroecology, as a scientific approach, relies on a better knowledge of biodiversity at all levels of organization and function, in order to better manage agricultural production systems, from farm scale to landscape. Ecological concepts such as functional redundancy, complementary use of resources, can be applied to farming systems, with the purpose of improving their resilience. Transposing the concepts of agroecology to livestock production has been recently proposed by Dumont et al. (2013). One of the principles proposed for the design of sustainable animal production systems is to enhance diversity within animal production systems in order to strengthen their resilience. Why is it so? An increased biodiversity allows benefiting from complementary aptitudes. For example, in the case of disease resistance, the diversity of hosts will limit the risk of the specialization of a highly pathogenic agent with devastating consequences. It does not mean that diseases will not occur but the spread of infections and the overall impact on animal health should be limited (Springbett et al., 2003).