Advancing towards the final stage of Ardi

A follow-up meeting of the ARDI project was held on 4th May 2021, which was virtual via Teams due to the pandemic. The project has also been extended for another year due to the pandemic. The actions most affected by this situation were action 3 (strengthening connections) and action6: (creation of transfrontier body) since they are the ones which movement restrictions affect the most.

The state of technical actions was reviewed at the meeting and pending some results being broadcast in different forums action 4 (transfrontier genetic evaluation) and 5 (new characters) can be considered complete.

The creation of a transfrontier body, whose legal form has already been defined, likewise the bodies forming part thereof is steadily advancing, and its functioning outlined.

We already have specific results: implantation of genomic selection in Manech and Latxa; integration of genetic Manech population value in the Latxa population; exchange of methodologies and ways of calculating between both populations; control day model to analyse milk composition characters and somatic cell count; survival model to analyse functional longevity; situation review regarding resistance to parasites; and uniformisation of udder morphology classifications.

All these results will be included in the final publication and presented at the project final event on 30th September, which hopefully will be face-to-face.