In 2022, NordGen Farm Animals continued the ambitious task of creating portraits of all the Nordic native animal breeds. The portraits contain information about each breed and its current status and are being written with support from the different breeding organizations in the Nordic countries. As we have some 140 different animal breeds this is a time-consuming and resource demanding project, but it fills a void and constitute information asked for as there is no other place where information about our Nordic native animal breeds can be found all in one place. During 2022, NordGen published the story of the Nordic Brown bee, Finnish Native Chicken, Norwegian Nordland/Lyngen horse and Eastern Finncattle on their website.
Nordic Mountain Cattle – Cultural heritage and Genetics (3MC).
The project utilized an innovative approach for combining several academic disciplines to give us a more nuanced picture of the history, culture and heritage of the mountain cattle breeds in the northern parts of Finland, Norway and Sweden. The results can be used, for example, in achieving more attention, and making safeguarding decisions for the endangered breeds.
The project was running 2019-2022 and has reached many relevant conclusions and managed to disseminate information about the cattle breeds to the different target groups. The project, which is financed by Interreg Nord, Lapin liitto and Region Norrbotten, is carried out in Nordic co-operation between universities, companies and breeding organisations in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Read more in
Projects.
NordFrost Network, NaNo Horse and Northern European Horse Network
In 2022, The
NordFrost Network was started with two seminars. The network includes a broad group of stakeholders enabling people from different backgrounds to meet, share experiences and create joint efforts to the conservation of native farm animal and fish breeds. This will contribute to Nordic food security and self-sufficiency, as well as conserving the unique biodiversity of the numerous native breeds found in the Nordic region. Read more in
Projects. NordGen arranged the first Native Horse Network meeting in November 2019 in Oslo, Norway, with participants from the Nordic countries and Lithuania. Since then, the network has had meetings online due to covid-19. The network has been successful and one of the results from the network is the project for genomic characterization of the Nordic Native Horse breeds (Project NaNo Horse).
Through an ERFP ad-hoc action (European Regional Focal Point for Animal Genetic Resources) - we expanded to a new and broader network in 2022 – The Network for native horse breeds in the Baltic Sea region and Northern Europe. This network had a physical meeting in Alnarp, Sweden on November 18-19, 2022.
The goal of the network is focused on the improvement of the management of endangered native horse breeds and contributes to the:
• Conservation and sustainable use of Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR)
• Strengthen collaboration within the European Region searching new regional projects, research, workshops, and knowledge exchange of good practice on national programs.
In 2022 NordGen Farm animals in collaboration with SLU, NMBU and the Norwegian Horse Center started the project “Genomic Characterization as a Tool Towards Sustainable Breeding of the Nordic Native Horse Breeds”
(NaNo Horse) to characterize the native Nordic horse breeds at a genomic level through whole-genome sequence DNA. The native Nordic horse breeds are an important genetic resource, not only due to their cultural heritage, but also due to their potential unique genetics that may prove to be valuable for the horse breeding sector, and more widely, to society. Read more in
Projects.