OM A129

This issue of Options Méditerranéennes gathers articles from the contributions presented at the online Symposium “Addressing the challenges of agro-pastoral farming systems to strengthen their resilience”, organized on 3rd December 2020 by the Mediterranean Working Group and the Livestock Farming Systems Study Commission of the European Federation of Animal Science in the framework of its 71st Annual Meeting. The Symposium focused on the challenges and drivers of change that the livestock sector faces in the Mediterranean and less-favoured areas, and it included two scientific sessions: “Combining the diversity of resources and farming practices to ensure resilience at different scales” and “Diversity of animal genetic resources for resilient farming systems”. The volume also contains articles on the outcomes of selected projects that dealt with the above mentioned challenges from the ARIMNET and ARIMNET2 Calls (supported by the European Union’s FP7 Research and Innovation Programme), that aimed to coordinate agricultural research in the Mediterranean. This publication is contributing towards spreading the scientific knowledge on the role of diversity for enhancing Mediterranean farming resilience, generated from scientific cooperation between researchers from different disciplines and countries of the region.