ARDI Project follow-up meeting in Hendaye (France)
The ARDI project partners met in Hendaye (France) on 12thApril 2019 to assess the project administration and financial management, likewise to comment on the advance status of each technical action undertaken by ARDI.
Regarding administrative management, Kaizen and Neiker reported that the economic status of the project in its first year was appropriate, moreover expenditure for the 2017-2018 period had been correctly accounted for. As to technical actions, Neiker and ARDIEKIN divulged the advances made regarding connection reinforcement among the selection schema of the Latxa and Manech breeds. They also commented work was being done on the design of a new mating programme, furthermore, the next artificial insemination campaign will include 500 doses of Manech tête rousse and 500 Manech tête noire respectively in the Latxa Blondface and Latxa Blackface flocks of Navarre. Neiker also reported on the advance in the test-day model implementation for genetic assessment of milk production and quality, and commented that use of said methodology improves the reliability of the genetic value estimations. Likewise, Neiker has been working on the estimation of effective census and consanguinity of the Latxa population using molecular information. In addition, the INRA is advancing in the development of equations to calculate Manech sheep lactation in the same way as for Latxa, to carry out a similar genetic assessment and compare the results obtained. Lastly, IDELE (Cattle Farmers’ Institute) has defined and characterised new flock production which are indicative of functional longevity such as the incidence rate of mastitis, udder morphology and parasite resistance.