Stem Cell Culture Collection - Promising Strategy for Animal Genetic Resource Preservation

With the continuous increase of world population, intensified industrial activities, and aggravating environmental pollution, biodiversity is severely endangered to an unprecedented extent. Animal resources, a basis of agriculture and the whole society closely related to living and production, supply human beings with meat, eggs, milk, furs, medicinal materials, products for athletic and ornamental purposes, etc. In most developed countries, massive feeding is restricted within a limited number of high yield breeds or crossbreeds for an intensified operating system of animal husbandry, virtually reducing the variety of local animal breeds. In the meanwhile, despite the existence of enormous animal genetic resources, the lack of efficient preservation strategies and blind introduction of exotic breeds for hybridization have significantly compromised the diversity. As a result, only a few high-yield breeds and hybrids are made more widespread, and gradually supersede indigenous breeds, therefore leading to a shrunken genetic resource pool, progressive narrowing of genetic variation and subsequent crisis of genetic treasures. Nowadays, the livestock and poultry breeds are disappearing at the speed of 1 to 2 per week, so it’s definitely far-reaching to explore an efficient and reasonable preservation method for the development of animal husbandry, utilization of animal resources and ecological balance. As evolution has it, livestock and poultry breeds, the best narration of human labour, diet, religion and customs, is culturally a tangible carrier of civilization vicissitudes (Zhang, 2003). Those animal breeds with precious genome, physiological characteristics, disease resistance, adaptability, and so forth, serve as ideal research models. Moreover, the animal biodiversity provides abundant original materials for the thremmatologists, create infinite selection possibilities, reduce the risks and challenge of animal husbandry, and enhance its interior tenacity and exterior opportunities, thereby enabling people to handle environmental and marketing changes, and invigorating its long term development. China has the most abundant genetic resources of livestock and poultry, featuring balanced breed range and characteristic distinction. Some genetic and phenotypic properties par excellence, such as adaptability, hardiness, fecundity, etc., are essentially the outcome of thousands-of-year interaction between natural environment and artificial breeding.