SMARTER will develop and deploy innovative strategies to improve Resilience and Efficiency (R&E) related traits in sheep and goats. SMARTER will find these strategies by: i) generating and validating novel R&E related traits at a phenotypic and genetic level ii) improving and developing new genome-based solutions and tools relevant for the data structure and size of small ruminant populations, iii) establishing new breeding and selection strategies for various breeds and environments that consider R&E traits . SMARTER with help from stakeholders chose several key R&E traits including feed efficiency, health (resistance to disease, survival) and welfare. Experimental populations will be used to identify and dissect new predictors of these R&E traits and the trade-off between animal ability to overcome external challenges. SMARTER will estimate the underlying genetic and genomic variability governing these R&E related traits. This variability will be related to performance in different environments including genotype-by-environment interactions (conventional, agro-ecological and organic systems) in commercial populations. The outcome will be accurate genomic predictions for R&E traits in different environments across different breeds and populations. SMARTER will also create a new cooperative European and international initiative that will use genomic selection across countries. This initiative will make selection for R&E traits faster and more efficient. SMARTER will also characterize the phenotype and genome of traditional and underutilized breeds. Finally, SMARTER will propose new breeding strategies that utilise R&E traits and trade-offs and balance economic, social and environmental challenges. The overall impact of the multi-actor SMARTER project will be ready-to-use effective and efficient tools to make small ruminant production resilient through improved profitability and efficiency.

iSAGE will enhance the sustainability, competitiveness and resilience of the European Sheep and Goat sectors through collaboration between industry and research. iSAGE have a powerful consortium with 18 industry representatives from various EU production systems and socio-economic contexts. The sheep and goat sector will be investigated because it is sensitive to general socio-economic, demographic, and ecological and market challenges; nevertheless, the project’s approach and results will be made available and disseminated to other EU livestock industries. Therefore, at the core of iSAGE is a participatory approach centered on a multi-actor internal and external communication (WP) to build the project from the farmer level. This approach will ensure relevant issues are addressed and the project outcomes are applicable in practice and create a farm-level observatory and knowledge exchange network on the sustainability of livestock. This WP will also assist three assessment work packages that will deal with the sustainability assessment of sheep and goat farm systems and related supply chains, with socio-economic demographic and consumer trend analyses, and with the impacts of climate change. Assessment WPs will inform action WPs that will: (1) redesign holistic farming systems to best reconcile the various demands concerning productivity, sustainability and societal values. (2) identify industry solutions that aim to improve sustainability and productivity of sheep and goat systems through breeding, including new phenotypes linked to sustainable animal productivity. iSAGE, together with stakeholders and end-users, will draft a roadmap for further research and policy making. The stakeholder groups will be the key players in disseminating project outputs through case studies and demonstrations to act as a blueprint to other producers across Europe and create networks to assist wider implementation of iSAGE outputs.