Monitoring and documentation of the animal genetic resources in Bulgaria

Abstract

Bulgaria is a country rich in genetic resources, with more than 120 native, locally adapted, and exotic livestock and poultry breeds and lines. The documentation and monitoring of these resources are essential for their management, conservation, and sustainable use. The objective of this work is to analyse the development, current state, and trends in the monitoring and documentation of animal genetic resources in Bulgaria, as well as the presentation of the data at the national and international levels. Data from the periodicals “Farm Animal Breeds in the Republic of Bulgaria” and the world information system DAD-IS were used for the analysis and compared with other countries in Europe.

The results indicate that in Bulgaria there is a well-organized system for collecting and publishing information about livestock breeds, controlled by breeding organizations. It is one of the countries with the most consistent reporting of population data to DAD-IS, providing, on average, data about 87% of its breeds annually in 2019–2023. A trend of increase compared to the values in 2010–2015 (65%) was also observed, which indicates an improvement in the organization of data presentation at the international level. A weakness in reporting data about the state of ex situ in vitro collections was identified: Bulgaria reported data to DAD-IS only in 2017. However, the data about the current state of the national gene bank are regularly published online at the national level. Regarding the completeness of data about genetic resources from Bulgaria in DAD-IS, the country is among the top three in Europe, surpassed only by Austria and Iceland.