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Introduction

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Environmental Stress and Amelioration in Livestock Production

Abstract

Animals live in complex environments in which they are constantly confronted with short- and long-term changes due to a wide range of factors, such as environmental temperature, photoperiod, geographical location, nutrition, and socio-sexual signals. Homeostasis, the state of relative physiological stability in an organism, is a prerequisite to survive. Despite changes in environmental conditions, many living species have the ability to maintain their homeostasis within fixed limits by means of a set of specific innate repertoire of counter regulatory behavioral and physiological mechanisms. When the individual innate and acquired repertoire of counter regulatory mechanisms are overridden by environmental or internal perturbations a state of stress is reached and the ‘stress responsive systems’ are activated. The ‘stress system’ consists of neuroanatomical and functional structures that produce the behavioral, physiological, and biochemical changes directed toward maintaining homeostasis, when threatened. The environment surrounding livestock plays a significant role in influencing their productivity. Among the environmental variables affecting livestock, heat stress seems to be one of the most intriguing factors making difficult animal production in many of the world areas. Though the animals live in a complex world but researchers most often study the influence of only one stress at a time since comprehensive, balanced multifactorial experiments are technically difficult to manage, analyze, and interpret. There is, in general, a strong relationship between agro-climatic conditions, population density, cropping systems, and livestock production. Rangelands are the largest land use systems on the Earth. They predominate in semi-arid tropical areas of the world. These pastoral systems are those in which people depend entirely on livestock for their livelihoods. The key constraints of arid and semi-arid tropical environment are their low biomass productivity, high climatic variability, and limited availability of water. All these constraints make these regions difficult for sustainable livestock production. Research agendas need to take into account the trade-offs and synergies arising from these livestock population in tropical environments so that the poor are able to reap the multiple benefits provided by these ecosystems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Physiology and Biochemistry, Central Sheep and Wool Research Institute, Avikanagar, Jaipur, Rajasthan, 304501, India

    Veerasamy Sejian

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  1. Veerasamy Sejian
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Correspondence to Veerasamy Sejian .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Division of Physiology and Biochemistry, Central Sheep and Wool Research Institut, Avikanagar, Via-Jaipur, 304501, Rajasthan, India

    Veerasamy Sejian

  2. , Division of Physiology and Biochemistry, Central Sheep and Wool Research Institut, Avikanagar, Via-Jaipur, 304501, India

    S.M.K. Naqvi

  3. and OARDC, Department of Animal Sciences, The Ohio State University, Wooster, 44691, Ohio, USA

    Thaddeus Ezeji

  4. , Department of Veterinary Clinical Scienc, The Ohio State University, Columbus, 43210, Ohio, USA

    Jeffrey Lakritz

  5. , Carbon Management and Sequestration Cent, The Ohio State University, Columbus, 43210, Ohio, USA

    Rattan Lal

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Sejian, V. (2012). Introduction. In: Sejian, V., Naqvi, S., Ezeji, T., Lakritz, J., Lal, R. (eds) Environmental Stress and Amelioration in Livestock Production. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29205-7_1

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