Julie M. Ojango

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research | CGIAR · International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

Introduction: Genetic improvement of general resilience of dairy cattle is deemed as a part of the solution to low dairy productivity and poor cattle adaptability in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). While indicators of general resilience have been proposed and evaluated in other regions, their applicability in SSA remains unexplored. This study sought to...

The Dorper breed developed in South Africa is used either as a pure breed or crossbred with existing indigenous breeds by many countries across the African continent to improve sheep production. This article presents documented information on the adoption, use, and performance of Dorper sheep across the continent of Africa and opportunities for the...

The current review examines potential solutions to enhance the sustainability and productivity of the dairy sector in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with an emphasis on breeding for resilience. Additionally, the paper explores various indicators for measuring resilience and provides insights into the data that can be utilized to quantify resilience in SS...

Interventions to improve productivity in pastoral livestock systems of northern Kenya focus on the management of the rangeland resources and grazing areas with few initiatives on changes related to the livestock assets. However, changing climatic conditions with high frequencies of droughts have increased the vulnerability of pastoral communities a...

Breeding programs that deliver improved genetics that are adaptable to the local environments and smallholder management systems are possible and sustainable when supported by: digital tools for data capture, integration of genomic analyses, enhanced capacity of national partners and participation of private and public sector actors.

Dairy production contributes significantly to food and nutritional security and employment in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, production is negatively affected by environmental challenges such as high temperatures and heat stress, diseases and parasites, erratic rainfall patterns, and shortages of feed crops and forages. Thus, the resilience cap...

The ability of smallholder dairy farming systems (SHDFS) to achieve desirable lactation-curve characteristics is constrained or reduced by environmental stresses. Under stressful production environments in the tropics, the better lactation-curve characteristics in smallholder dairy farms are a result of improved dairy genetics and husbandry practic...

This study examines genetic and genomic approaches for sustainability in the dairy systems of developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa, where farms are predominately managed by smallholders, with 80% of land holdings being smaller than ten hectares. Sustainability in these systems involves addressing the global challenges of climate change while...

Ethiopian dairy sector is determined by smallholder farming system and strongly conditioned by the environment. The study aimed to identify optimum level of dairyness for specific environment. Ethiopian dairy animal was genotyped using medium density SNP array and merged with reference cattle population of Holstein and Jersey genotyped data. Breed...

Client-responsiveness is a foundation for effectiveness of public sector breeding programs in agriculture, aquaculture and livestock. However, there remains a considerable lack of clarity about what this means, specifically in terms of how programs can be gender-responsive. This study contributes to addressing that need. It does so through sharing...

Despite the relevance of dairy production in the fight against food insecurity and unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), negative effects of climate change and general changes in the production environment pose huge challenges to its profitability. Thus, there is a need to improve resilience capacity of dairy animals to adapt to this changing e...

The Red Maasai are indigenous sheep breeds known for their adaptability in arid and semi-arid environments while the Dorper is known for its good mutton production. A field experiment cross breeding program for the two breeds was set up in 2003 to exploit these traits. In this paper, we present the genetic parameters for birth weight (BWT), weaning...

A major constraint faced in implementing sheep and goat improvement programs in low input systems is the limited involvement of the pastoral livestock keepers. Gender dynamics represent strong determinants of pastoral livestock management practices but are however very rarely integrated in livestock improvement programs. This research adopts a gend...

Correct pedigree is essential to produce accurate genetic evaluations and positively affect genetic gains of dairy cattle. However, close relatives were not fully documented in dairy herds registered under Ethiopian dairy cattle database. Therefore, genetic data was used to identify close relatives and parentage reassignments. African Dairy Genetic...

Improved climate-resilient strains of indigenous sheep and goats were introduced in the Nyando basin of western Kenya in 2013. This study evaluated the performance of the breeds five years after their first introduction, and their contribution to household revenues. Red Maasai and Red Maasai x Dorper sheep and Galla goats introduced in Nyando adapt...

Selection based on genomic predictions has become the method of choice for genetic improvement in dairy cattle. This offers huge opportunity for developing countries with little or no pedigree data, and preliminary studies have shown promising results. The African Dairy Genetic Gains (ADGG) project initiated a digital system of dairy performance da...

The purpose of this report is to document the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on dairy cattle farming in Ethiopia and draw recommendations for enhancing dairy farming and the dairy sector’s resilience to such pandemics and other market shocks. It presents the results of a rapid survey of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on smallholder...

This study evaluates the effect of heat stress on milk production and describes the pattern of response of milk yield to increasing heat load, using temperature-humidity index (THI) on test-day milk records of small holder dairy cattle herds in the sub-Saharan African climate of Tanzania. Climate data obtained from aWhere, an agricultural weather d...

Modelling the growth curve of animals provides information on growth characteristics and is important for optimizing management in different livestock systems. This study evaluated the growth curves of crossbred calves from birth to 30 months of age in small holder dairy farms in Tanzania using a two parameter (exponential), four different three pa...

Infrastructure and institutional frameworks supporting sustainable phenotyping systems are lacking in most developing countries, which are characterized by subsistence agricultural systems with small, highly dispersed farms having few animals, which makes performance recording inefficient, unattractive and expensive. Nevertheless, capturing perform...

This study assessed the feasibility of across-country genetic evaluation of dairy cattle in sub-Saharan Africa where data on livestock production are scarce. Genetic parameters were estimated for the 305-day milk yield in the first lactation and across five lactations, for age at first calving and for interval between first and second calving. Esti...

The lack of data recording in smallholder dairy cattle systems implies that the availability of molecular data could offer some quick wins in terms of using genomic information for genomic prediction and selection. Initial studies on genomic prediction with data from smallholder dairy herds have reported promising results with low to medium values...

An online survey on the state of existing dairy data, dairy improvement infrastructure and human capacity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) was undertaken with the aim of assessing whether the state of existing animal recording, dairy improvement methods and key issues facing dairy production together with means of addressing the issues differ among coun...

Efforts to improve dairy production in smallholder farming systems of East Africa over the past decade have had limited impact because of the lack of records on performance to guide targeted breeding programs. Estimates of genetic parameters in these systems are lacking. Using data generated through a project (“Germplasm for Dairy Development in Ea...

Genomic selection (GS) has resulted in rapid rates of genetic gains especially in dairy cattle in developed countries resulting in a higher proportion of genomically proven young bulls being used in breeding. This success has been undergirded by well-established conventional genetic evaluation systems. Here, the status of GS in terms of the structu...

Genomic selection has resulted in rapid rates of genetic gains especially in dairy cattle in developed countries and well established conventional genetic evaluations systems have provided the strong foundation. The basic building blocks for data recording and genetic evaluation are lacking in most developing countries. The application of digital t...

Livestock traders are a key conduit for incentives in livestock production systems. Their actions affect producer prices, investment decisions, and their livelihoods. However, smallholder farmers in rural communities of eastern Africa often have limited understanding of the marketing process and the interactions among market actors. This study was...

AAAC

http://hdl.handle.net/10568/78405

The aim of this article was to study opportunities for improvement of the indigenous and threatened Red Maasai sheep (RM) in Kenya, by comparing purebreeding with crossbreeding with Dorper sheep (D) as a terminal breed, in two different environments (Env. A and a harsher Env. B), assuming different levels of genotype-by-environment interaction (G??...

Meat production is the most important trait in the breeding objectives of sheep production in East Africa. The aim of this study was to investigate breed differences in live weight, conformation, carcass traits and economic values for meat production among Red Maasai and Dorper sheep and their crosses. In total, 88 ram lambs, which were reared at t...

It is estimated that 14% of the livestock in Eastern Africa are comprised of 146 million goats. The goats are in varying agroecological zones under farming systems ranging from small-scale mixed crop–livestock systems with a few animals raised on limited land resources, to extensive pastoral systems where large numbers of animals are raised on larg...

Development of the livestock industry and its role in poverty alleviation in developing countries depends on how adaptive the production systems are to changing global environmental and economic trends. This paper characterizes dairy production systems in India, Tanzania, Kenya and Nicaragua, and describes the genetic and breeding technologies that...

Due to the absence of accurate pedigree information, it has not been possible to implement genetic evaluations for crossbred cattle in African small-holder systems. Genomic selection techniques that do not rely on pedigree information could, therefore, be a useful alternative. The objective of this study was to examine the feasibility of using geno...

The CGIAR research programme on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, in collaboration with several partners is testing a portfolio of interventions to address the threat of changing climatic conditions for smallholder farming communities living beside river flood plains, grouped into “Climate Smart Villages” (CSVs). We present characterist...

Crossing local breeds with exotic breeds may be an option for increased livestock productivity. However, there is a risk for endangerment of the local breeds. One such case is in Kenya where the imported Dorper breed is used for crossbreeding with Red Maasai sheep. The aim of this study was to investigate farmers' trait preferences as a basis for d...

Abstract Text: Reproductive performance and disease data were recorded for 2 years on 1,824 dairy cows in smallholder farms using participatory approaches and on-farm recording. Most animals experienced one service to conception. Calving intervals were long, ranging between 261 and 761 days, with an average of 451±101days. Herd level of production...

A novel use of high density SNP assays to optimize choice of different crossbred dairy cattle genotypes in small-holder systems in East Africa. ABSTRACT: We present use of SNP technologies to obtain for the first time, rapid, large-scale, in situ estimates of performance of crossbred cows in smallholder herds. Compared to historical approaches, our...

Abstract Text: The Red Maasai sheep breed is under threat due to indiscriminate crossbreeding and strategies are needed to conserve and improve the breed. The aim of this study was to understand farmers’ preferences for important traits of flocks of Red Maasai, Dorper and crosses in two different areas, Amboseli and Isinya, in Kenya. Farmers identi...

2214-0115 © 2014 Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Universiti Malaysia Kelantan. Abstract This study investigates the purchase behavior of sheep traders in Kajiado County in Kenya. This is, to the best of our knowledge,...

The Global Plan of Action (GPA) for Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR) adopted by FAO recognizes the role of AnGR for food security through improved productivity while maintaining genetic diversity. A critical issue for conservation and genetic improvement programmes is the availability of supportive infrastructure. The objective of the present study...

Indigenous livestock breeds are generally well adapted to harsh tropical environments. Some breeds are drought and disease tolerant - attributes important for adaptation to climate change. Due to inadequate selective breeding, indigenous breeds are often unproductive. Instead, cross- breeding with exotic breeds has been practiced, mostly indiscrimi...

Since 1999, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in partnership with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) have been providing capacity building on the sustainable use of Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR) through the novel approach of “training the trainers”. Scientists from 46 developing countries in Sub-Saharan Afri...

In the Ankole pastoral production system animals are grazed on pasture all year round. The cattle are not supplemented with conserved pasture or commercial feed except minerals. The large number of factors that influence production makes it impractical and expensive to use field trials to explore all the farm system options. A model of a pastoral p...

To facilitate livestock improvement in developing countries, records on animal populations and their various productivity levels are important. However, in these countries, livestock recording presents a huge challenge. This paper presents an outline of the historical developments and the current scenario in dairy and beef recording in Kenya, where...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Successful livestock improvement programmes focusing on low-input smallholder production systems though rare, are possible using community-based approaches. This paper outlines important design and implementation components of a goat improvement programme undertaken by FARM Africa in the eastern highlands of Ke...

Livestock provide a wide variety of goods and services that generate income and support the livelihoods of millions of poor people in the developing world. Natural and human selections have shaped existing livestock genotypes throughout the estimated 12,000year history since the first animal domestication. The result, in many production systems in...

The use of exotic dairy goats in breeding programmes for smallholder production systems is popular in Eastern Africa. However, information on the performance of exotic breeds within these systems is scarce. This paper presents information on performance of Toggenburg dairy goats under smallholder production systems in a medium to high agricultural...

The use of imported semen within the Holstein-Friesian cattle population in Kenya has contributed to increased milk production per cow, however, information on how this has impacted on functional traits, particularly early life survival and reproductive performance is scarce. This study evaluated age at first calving (AFC), survival to age at first...

________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract Herd health and adaptability are of concern in dairy herds in the tropics because of persistent exposure to multiple stresses of low quality and quantity feeding, heat stress, high disease and parasitic incidences, poor husbandry and breeding practices. The co...

Direct and maternal (co)variance components and genetic parameters were estimated for growth and reproductive traits in the Kenya Boran cattle fitting univariate animal models. Data consisted of records on 4502 animals from 81 sires and 1010 dams collected between 1989 and 2004. The average number of progeny per sire was 56. Direct heritability est...

Data consisting of 18 884 weight records collected from 1273 Boran cattle from birth to 24 months of age were used to estimate covariance functions and genetic parameters for growth of Boran cattle using random regression (RR) models under a situation of small herd size and inconsistent recording. The RR model fitted quadratic Legendre polynomials...

Bio-economic profit models were developed and applied to evaluate biological and economic variables that characterize production systems utilizing the Boran breed. Production systems were described according to their sale age (24 months short-fed or 36 months long-fed), levels of input (low, medium or high) and final goal (beef or dual purpose) rep...

Economic values for production (sale weight in steers, SWs, kg and heifers, SWh, kg; dressing percentage, DP; consumable meat percentage, CMP and milk yield, MY, kg) and functional (cow weight, CoWT, kg; cow survival rate, CoSR, %; postweaning survival rate, PSR, %; feed intake of cows, FIc, heifers, FIh and steers, FIs, kg DM) traits were estimate...

Genetic parameters were estimated for weaning weight (WW) in Kenya Boran cattle using animal models that assumed non-zero direct-maternal genetic covariance. In addition to the direct and maternal genetic effects, maternal permanent environmental and sire by herd-year interaction effects were tested. Two datasets were used. Dataset 1 (DS1) included...

Environmental sources of variation influencing growth and reproduction performance of Kenya Boran cattle were evaluated using 4502 and 2681 growth and reproductive performance records from a large scale commercial ranch and a national beef research station located in the Arid and Semi Arid Lands of Kenya. Growth traits included birth (BW), weaning...