[Jacob-list] Comment on "American Jacob"

[George L.Benedict]

Joan,
I assume from your "famous quote" that you are chosing your own definition of the term landrace. Meanwhile the rest of us botonists and agronomists will continue with the broadly accepted definition in our textbooks. The American Jacob IS a standardized breed. Particularly with respect to color ratios and horn set, we breed for very restricted phenotypes and genotypes with respect to what would occur without the deliberate intervention of humans. Furthermore the term landrace is used by botanists and agronomists to indicate a local population highly adapted to local environmental conditions and selected by local farmers who have no organized breed organization or scientific approach to breeding. Presumably you think we are also "on the cusp" of having a standard for Jacobs. It looked pretty well written down and developed the last time I looked at JSC or JSBA literature.

George

PS
Excerpt from one of my texts:
"The term "landrace", a somewhat misleading direct transliteration of the German "Landraße" (which connotes autochthonous or indigenous race or variety), is widely applied to local, often genetically highly variable, crop variants or animals cultivated as part of traditional agriculture [Simmonds (1979) and Harlan (1992) contain useful discussions of landraces]. Both ecogeographic and human cultural contexts influence landrace evolution." 

This does not characterise the modern Jacob as bred in the US.

A landrace is a breed that has not been defined by a codified breed standard. For at least 200 years Jacobs have been bred for cosmetic and ornamental purposes and we in the US have taken this to an extreme when it comes to color ratios, horn conformation, eyelids, body size and weight and ,of late, heavy emphasis on fleece qualities.  
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