Capgenes
Founded in 2008, CAPGENES (www.capgenes.com) is the National association of goat breeders. It gathers all goat stakeholders involved in the promotion and breeding of French caprine breeds. CAPGENES is the French center for semen production in goat. CAPGENES is responsible for the national breeding scheme of the Alpine and Saanen dairy breeds and supervises other French breeds (12) under the control of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forest.
CAPGENES therefore defines the breeding objectives with stakeholders, develops the breeding schemes and is the national support for genetic improvement of caprine breeds.
CAPGENES is involved in the national research and development programs such as ‘RUSTIC’ dedicated to genomics longevity and dairy persistence
CAPGENES has services permitting to identify a network of farmers (n = 700), an equipment, enabling to produce and preserve 250,000 doses of frozen semen per year, and a technical team to provide guidance and technical actions necessary to conduct a scheme of selection. The infrastructures include a laboratory for cryopreservation and three buildings for quarantine and photoperiodic treatment of AI bucks. The buildings can hold up to 400 bucks.