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South America is quite heterogeneous as related to environmental conditions and there are diverse sets of production-marketing systems that have to be considered. As the agribusiness is very important to South-American economy, but also to the world's economy, any improvement in economic efficiency will give substantial benefits and therefore would be very worthwhile (Smith, 1989).
The Brazilian Society of Genetics held a Conference on that subject in 1989, with several important papers that should be referred in any study on the use of genetic resources in Latin America. Some important papers on strategies in genetic resource utilization (Smith, 1989), crossbreeding performance (Eisen, 1989), evaluation of dairy and dual purpose cattle (Vaccaro, 1989), beef cattle breed resources utilization (Koch et al., 1989), sheep breeding programs (Cardelino, 1989); camelids improvement programs (Novoa, 1989), alternative genetic resources as capibara (Lavorenti, 1989), beef cattle breeding or crossbreeding programs in Argentina (Joandet, 1989), Venezuela (Plasse, 1989) and Brazil (Barbosa and Duarte, 1989); dairy breeding programs in Brazil (Madalena, 1989; L�bo and Reis, 1989), Bolivia (Wilkins and Rojas, 1989), Cuba (L�pez, 1989) and Argentina (Musi, 1989) and genetic resources conservation in Brazil (Mariante and Trovo, 1989) were published.
But things have changed a lot in the world's economy in the last ten years and more recently, the Brazilian Society of Animal Breeding (SBMA) had presented in it's 3rd Symposium actual overviews of beef programs in Venezuela (Plasse, 2000) and Brazil (Barbosa, 2000; Euclides Filho, 2000; Ferraz and Eler, 2000; Josahkian, 2000; Leachman, 2000; Pineda, 2000; and Pötter, 2000 and Schenkel, 2000), dairy programs in Venezuela (Vaccaro, 2000) and Brazil (Martinez et al., 2000; Melo and Penna, 2000; Menezes, 2000; Dürr and Rorato, 2000; Vercesi Filho and Madalena, 2000; Verneque et al., 2000 and Thaler Neto, 2000); swine breeding programs in Brazil (Freitas, 2000; Guimar�es and Lopes, 2000; Nascimento, 2000), breeding programs in poultry (Figueiredo et al, 2000 and Michelin Filho, 2000), programs in goats and sheeps in Brazil (Gon�alves, 2000; Morais, 2000; Ollivier, 2000; Ribeiro, 2000; Vieira et al., 2000 and Ara�jo and Simpl�cio, 2000) and also on horse breeding in Brazil (Bergmann, 2000). References on genetic resources on goats in Mexico can also be found in Montaldo and Meza (1999 and 2000). O lot of very important information is also at FAO's DAD (Domestic Animals Diversity System, www.fao.org).
Those references can give a good technical and scientific overview of a lot of programs that are being conducted in Latin and South America.
The objectives of this paper are to give an overview of South American animal production and discuss its perspective as related to genetic resources utilization and the possible impact of new technologies in production.
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Conference Section
