Abstract: The preservation of the biodiversity of animal breeds is the key to maintain the ability of animal production toadapt to the changing environment. A global overview of goats is showing a contradictory situation: on one hand,small but well organised sectors have developed in a few countries for milk,meat and fibre production; on the other,most of the goats are mostly still used for auto consumption of milk,meat and fibres in village herds. The present goat genetic situation includes a small number of selected and well characterised breeds for milk,meat and fibres and a majority of not well defined populations and local breeds,generally without selection schemes and organisation. After having observed that in many cases,this report concludes by some proposals to express with more efficiency the genetic potentiality of this interesting species.

Key words: goat; selection; breeding; worldwide