Adapting Sheep Production to Changing Climate: Conclusions and Researchable Priorities

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the salient findings of various researchers in their field of specialization pertaining to climate change and sheep production. It also highlights the future perspectives that are essential to sustain sheep production in the changing climate scenario, and presents an insight into the impacts of climate change on various aspects of sheep production. It summarizes the salient findings pertaining to climate change impacts on adaptive capacity, immune response, and disease occurrences in sheep. The chapter synthesizes the knowledge about the contribution of sheep to climate change and the various mechanisms through which it adapts to the devastating effects of climate change. In addition, an attempt is made to summarize the different adaptation strategies to sustain sheep production in the changing climate scenario, and recapitulate the different amelioration strategies such as management strategies, nutritional intervention, and body condition scoring (BCS) application employed to improve sheep production during exposure to the hot tropical environment. The chapter also states the importance of refining the existing thermal indices to appropriately quantify the impact of heat stress on sheep. It proposes a new breeding strategy involving adaptation, production, and low methane (CH₄) emission traits to ensure optimum production in sheep farms. Further, it also emphasizes that the existing agroadvisory services must be strengthened to allow sufficient reaction time for the farmers. Proposed advanced biotechnological tools include nutrigenomics, metagenomics, transcriptomics, and epigenetics to study in detail the cellular and molecular mechanisms of sheep adaptation in an attempt to identify important biological markers for heat stress. The importance of developing appropriate vaccine against CH₄ producing microorganisms has been described. Finally, climate-smart sheep production is discussed, which involves breeding only the productive animals; improving diets; better flock, manure, health, water, and grassland management; appropriate housing; and insurance for sheep farmers.