Animal genetic resources for the twenty-first century

Genetic resources of the species of animals of interest to farmers underpin both immediate and longer term food and agricultural production and the critical sustainable intensification of this throughout the world's broad range of available production environments. The current state of these now essentially irreplaceable genetic resources is the result of up to 12 millennia of domestication processes, together with the more abrupt activity during the twentieth century. Key influences are summarized, as are the present and future developments by humans that are likely to impact on the characterization, use and development, conservation and access to those remaining resources. The imperatives for their management by wise use, together with a mechanism being developed to assist countries and all stakeholders to realize these imperatives, are outlined. The need for this sustainable intensification for at least the next century will focus the genetic resource management effort on understanding the nature of the Earth's primary production environments and on the use and development of resources that are already adapted to particular environments. The interests of all peoples will be best served by particular immediate action in the lower input, higher stress agro-ecosystems, which currently account for the majority of the world's farm animal genetic resources and the majority now at risk, together with providing the majority of food and agriculture now and continuing to do so throughout the twenty-first century. It is these lower input, higher stress production environments and their associated adapted animal genetic resources that now pose the major issues for research, training and development associated with utilizing the farm animal gene pool.