Biodiversity in goats

This paper assesses biodiversity in the goat and investigates whether there is some peculiarity in this biodiversity as compared to other species. The paper depends mainly on published databases and reviews. In 1999, there were over 710 million goats in the world in a total of 570 breeds. Developing countries harbour 96% of the world goat population, but only 60% of the breeds. An index of the number of breeds per million of population was used to compare degree of biodiversity in different livestock species. This index for the goat was 0.8 as compared to 1.2 for sheep, 0.9 for cattle and 0.5 for buffalo. The highest proportion of breeds without reported population size is in the goat. Percentage of goat breeds not at risk was calculated as 41 as compared to 64 in buffalo, 36 for cattle, 39 for sheep, 21 for pig, 11 for ass, 25 for horse and 69 for camel and dromedary, while breed extinction percentage was 3, 0, 17, 12, 23, 6, 11 and 0, respectively. In terms of performance traits, Europe has the heaviest goat breeds with largest litter size and milk production, while Latin America and the Caribbean scored lowest in all these performance traits. Among-breed variability was lowest in Europe and highest in Africa. It is concluded that according to available information, biodiversity in the goat is within the range of that in other farm animal species. Many goat breeds are not characterized because most goats and breeds are in developing countries and/or under extensive production systems where characterization becomes more demanding.