Abstract
Goat farming has been severely affected by Desertification, limiting their water and food resources and inducing physiological heat stress that reduces the doe milk yield. Does well adapted to heat stress would be a possible solution, but creole or indigenous goats from desert or arid areas produce between 0.5 to 1.5 L of milk per day, which is lower than the 3 L of milk per day produced by dairy goats like the Saanen breed. Nevertheless, in this chapter, we will discuss the disadvantages of introducing common dairy goats in dry places. Instead, we propose the introduction of desert goats from the Middle East or India, because they produce high-quality milk with low feed intake, making a profitable goat farming activity, and an opportunity to include crossbreeding strategies to improve the herd milk yield. Creole goats, on other hand, has been an underestimated livestock animal with a rich and unveil genetic patrimony that migth improve the herd milk yield. The effect of improved diets and extensive husbandry conditions remains unexplored in desert creole goats, and the use of advanced knowledge in goat genomics, genetic expression, and a wide variety of molecular markers can improve the studies on creole goats for crossbreeding strategies identifying the best traits involved in high-quality milk production and adaptation to dry environments. In this way, the synergy between goat type selection and molecular markers should boost goat farming in recently new desert or arid zones, counteracting the detrimental effects produced by the desertification.
Highlights
The current climate change is a consequence of the increased content of atmospheric CO2, CH4, N2O, and particulate matter, which raised in 1.2°C (2018) the surface air temperature [1]
Taking advantage of all advances in genomics and molecular markers to follow goat milk production, will be discussed how these tools have been used and which are their potential to assist crossbreeding plan to improve goat milk production in areas affected by desertification
The literature analysis was done using google scholar and keywords such as; dry, desert, milk production, goat, farming, casein among other related words. Those studies performed on countries with hot, arid, or desert zones were considered for the analysis plus other reports from another countries to contrast the discussion
Summary
The current climate change is a consequence of the increased content of atmospheric CO2, CH4, N2O, and particulate matter, which raised in 1.2°C (2018) the surface air temperature [1]. One of these actions has been the migration of Pastoral activities to livestock production to sustain the goat farming in lands hardly affected by desertification [5] This adaptation involves changes in the feed resources, the growth of forage resistance to desert or arid conditions but with good nourish properties, and the improvements in goat management to reduce the heat stress and sustain the goat milk and milk derivatives such as Cheese, and Yogurt [2, 5, 7]. That suggests domestic goat has a genetic diversity across the globe, being a huge source of diverse goat types with different adaptation traits to improve milk production in different local environments and resist climate change in rural places with limited resources [3, 14]. Taking advantage of all advances in genomics and molecular markers to follow goat milk production, will be discussed how these tools have been used and which are their potential to assist crossbreeding plan to improve goat milk production in areas affected by desertification
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