Is my favourite breed rare? Improving the quality and quantity of information in the EFABIS system
Complete national breed inventories, supported by periodic monitoring of trends and associated risks, are a basic requirement for effective strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of AnGR. Without such information, some breed populations and unique breed characteristics may decline significantly, or even be lost, before measures are taken.
An important tool for AnGR documentation and monitoring is the FAO’s Domestic Animal Diversity Information System DAD-IS, a global database of livestock breed information. The European Farm Animal Biodiversity Information System (EFABIS) is the European information system for AnGR and serves as the source of European breed-related data for DAD-IS.
National Coordinators (NCs) are responsible for monitoring the status and trends of AnGR in their respective countries and regularly updating EFABIS with national data. This role involves close cooperation with breeding organisations, breed societies and genebanks to provide the data. However, according to EFABIS, the frequency of updating and the degree of completeness vary considerably across European countries (Figure 1).
In order to help improve the quality and quantity of data in the EFABIS system, the first of three webinars within the framework of the H2020 GenRes Bridge project took place in October 2021. The training session aimed to enhance awareness of information systems for genetic resources and to improve data quality and completeness in DAD-IS and EFABIS. This first webinar was an introductory session for NCs and other stakeholders inside and outside the AnGR domain. The next session will train NCs on how to implement data in EFABIS, while the final session is geared towards data providers.
A total of 25 participants were present for the first training. Most of them knew about EFABIS and had previous occasion to use it. About 40% of the participants heard about EFABIS through a FAO event, and another 40% were told about it by a colleague.
Roswitha Baumung (FAO), who presented EFABIS during the webinar, stated that a growing number of scientific articles are quoting EFABIS as a source of data for their projects (Figure 2). However, academia and researchers are not our target group; it is very important to spread the word to National Coordinators and data providers. FAO has put a lot of effort recently into developing various tools to extract data easily and to illustrate the results in various forms, such as graphs, that can be easily used. For example, a full report can be provided for a transboundary breed which includes the total estimated population size and all the demographic data per country.
“I’m going to have a close look since these information are very valuable” said one of the people responsible for the Montbéliard cattle in France, once he found out about EFABIS.
