Welcome to the SMARTER Database documentation!

This documentation describe how the SMARTER database is made. This project is started from cookiecutter data science project template and was then adapted to model additional requirements. In order to work correctly with this project, you will need both Docker and Docker Compose installed and configured for your user. You will need also Anaconda to manage project dependencies and installing required software. After that you need to configure some stuff in order to properly use this project.

This project is currently managed with git: you should track only scripts or dependencies, don’t try to track data folder (which can be very large and could change in any times) the .env configuration files (for security reasons) or any other files declared in .gitignore file. By following the instruction in Getting started section, you will be able to run your local instance of the SMARTER-database project!

Background

Small ruminant populations play a fundamental role for the livelihood and socio-economic well-being of human settlements, especially in marginal areas of Europe. Under-utilized sheep and goat breeds may be highly valuable in increasing the profitability of small ruminant farming in such marginal areas. These breeds are valuable because they have peculiar and often atypical genetic make-up which make them a potentially extraordinary resource to be exploited for adaptation to (harsh) environments, resilience to farming conditions, resistance to biotic and abiotic stressors, and the production of quality of products of animal origin (see Biscarini et al. 2015).

The SMARTER-database GitHub project is a collection of tools and scripts to collect, standardize and provide to the partners of the SMARTER Work Package 4 (and later to the whole community) a collection of genotype data and metadata information in hardy goat and sheep populations by combining new with already existing datasets. Those data can be exploited to characterize the genetic diversity and demography of sheep and goat breeds with a particular focus on underutilized breeds and to contribute to understanding the genetic basis of resilience and adaptation to the environment of hardy breeds.

This project is part of the SMARTER project which aims to develop and deploy innovative strategies to improve Resilience and Efficiency (R&E) related traits in sheep and goats.

Documentation Contents

Indices and tables