Conserving animal genetic resources: making priority lists of British and Irish livestock breeds

Prioritisation of livestock breeds for conservation is agreed to depend upon the genetic distinctiveness of breeds, on census data and degree of endangerment, and on other factors relating to the present, future, or past function of the breeds in the livestock industry. How these factors can be combined to yield a prioritised list needs to be considered. An objective framework for prioritisation can be deduced if breeds are compared with each other by plotting genetic distinctiveness against distinctiveness of function. In this paper, the native British and Irish cattle breeds (n = 31 commercial, minority and rare breeds) have been prioritised in this way. Those with highest conservation priority are Chillingham, Gloucester, Guernsey, Jersey, Shetland and Irish Moiled. The 25 native British sheep breeds that are not on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) Watchlist were also considered. The structure of the British sheep industry means that functional distinctiveness of breeds is not easily deduced. The only fully comparable characterisation data relate to wool fibre fineness class, so genetic distinctiveness was plotted against distinctiveness of this attribute. The non-rare breeds with highest conservation priority by this measure were Herdwick, Hampshire Down and Clun Forest.