Newsletter of the LowInputBreeds project. Issue 7. EU project LowInputBreeds - Development of integrated livestock breeding and management strategies to improve animal health, product quality and performance in European organic and ‘low input’ milk, meat and egg production

Summary

With this newsletter we are informing you about progress in subprojects of LowInputBreeds. Our thematic article in this issue, from Alexandros Stefanakis and Nikolaos Voutzourakis, explains breeding values for selective traits of Skafiano sheep.
We would particularly like to draw your attention to the third Symposium of the LowInputBreeds project, which will take place in Nantes, France, from the 26th to the 30th of August 2013.
LowInputBreeds will manage a session ”Breeding and Management in Low Input Production Systems” as a contribution to the 64th Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP) meeting. This is an ideal opportunity to share findings from the project and we would like to encourage all to submit abstracts by March 1, 2013. For more information see page 16 of this newsletter and our website at www.lowinputbreeds.org.
On the advice of a group of independent assessors we have invited 3 new partners to join our LowInputBreeds consortium to bring in additional expertise and data to subproject 1 on cattle. The following institutions are admitted: The Department of Veterinary Science and Public Health (DIVET) of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Milan University, Italy, the Department of Animal Breeding and Product Quality, Animal Production Research Centre, Nitra, Slovakia and the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority – Teagasc. We welcome these partners to our group and look forward to their contribution to LowInputBreeds.