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Feasibility of pedigree recording and genetic selection in village sheep flocks of smallholder farmers

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Abstract

Pedigree recording and genetic selection in village flocks of smallholder farmers have been deemed infeasible by researchers and development workers. This is mainly due to the difficulty of sire identification under uncontrolled village breeding practices. A cooperative village sheep-breeding scheme was designed to achieve controlled breeding and implemented for Menz sheep of Ethiopia in 2009. In this paper, we evaluated the reliability of pedigree recording in village flocks by comparing genetic parameters estimated from data sets collected in the cooperative village and in a nucleus flock maintained under controlled breeding. Effectiveness of selection in the cooperative village was evaluated based on trends in breeding values over generations. Heritability estimates for 6-month weight recorded in the village and the nucleus flock were very similar. There was an increasing trend over generations in average estimated breeding values for 6-month weight in the village flocks. These results have a number of implications: the pedigree recorded in the village flocks was reliable; genetic parameters, which have so far been estimated based on nucleus data sets, can be estimated based on village recording; and appreciable genetic improvement could be achieved in village sheep selection programs under low-input smallholder farming systems.

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Acknowledgments

We appreciate the efforts made by the cooperative farmers, particularly the farmer-enumerator Beletew, in data collection. We sincerely thank the farmers who spared their time and flocks for this work. Contributions of the staff at Debre Birhan Agricultural Research Centre are gratefully acknowledged. This paper is produced as part of the first author’s postdoctoral research funded by DAAD/ILRI. The project is financed by the Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicting interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Debre Birhan Agricultural Research Centre, P.O. Box 112, Debre Birhan, Ethiopia

    Solomon Gizaw, Shenkute Goshme & Tesfaye Getachew

  2. International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), P.O. Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria

    Aynalem Haile & Barbara Rischkowsky

  3. Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 338, 6700 AH, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Johan van Arendonk

  4. Department of Animal Breeding and Husbandry in the Tropics and Subtropics, University of Hohenheim, P.O. Box 70593, Stuttgart, Germany

    Anne Valle-Zárate

  5. International Livestock Research Institute, P.O. Box 5689, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Solomon Gizaw & Tadelle Dessie

  6. International Livestock Research Institute, P.O. Box 30709, Nairobi, Kenya

    Ally Okeyo Mwai

Authors
  1. Solomon Gizaw
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  2. Shenkute Goshme
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  3. Tesfaye Getachew
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  4. Aynalem Haile
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  5. Barbara Rischkowsky
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  6. Johan van Arendonk
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  7. Anne Valle-Zárate
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  8. Tadelle Dessie
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  9. Ally Okeyo Mwai
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Correspondence to Solomon Gizaw.

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Gizaw, S., Goshme, S., Getachew, T. et al. Feasibility of pedigree recording and genetic selection in village sheep flocks of smallholder farmers. Trop Anim Health Prod 46, 809–814 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-014-0569-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-014-0569-6

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