IGGC/ADAPTmap

Goat breeds are bred successfully in a wide variety of environments making the goat species an optimal candidate to disentangle the genetics of adaptation.  ADAPTmap is an International effort for coordination among projects for genotyping and re-sequencing of goat breeds developed in collaboration with the International Goat Genome Consortium (www.goatgenome.org) . The aim is to explore diversity of breeds and populations around the world by using traditional and novel approaches.  Population studies are targeted to assess variability based on mutation classification, analyzing the effects of mutation on protein structure as a tag for adaptation. Methods used for efficiently storing, querying and retrieving large-scale genomic, phenotyping and environmental data have been developed and an on-line questionnaire distributed to collect and summarize information on the various genomic initiatives on goats worldwide.  Information has been so far collected from 14 projects, most of which coordinated at the national level.  The number of sampled breeds ranges from 3 to 15 and covered in total 31 countries and a wide variability of environments and breeding systems. Most breeds are autochthonous (80%) and mostly bred for meat production (63%). In most cases (about 70%), sampling and genotyping/re-sequencing activities are planned to be completed in early 2013. Collection of FAO production environment descriptors (PED) is foreseen for about 40% of the populations. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) information is collected in 3 large projects. Integration of data from the various sources will allow for the comprehensive application of population genomics.