Designing community-based breeding programmes for goats in the Mexican highlands

The dry areas of Latin America are home to some of the poorest sectors of the population. Due to climatic constraints, agricultural production is low and unreliable. Livestock production, especially of small ruminants, represents one of the few secure options for income generation. However, the breeds of livestock, although highly adapted to the adverse environmental conditions, are low yielding and the production levels of unimproved animals do not justify investment in improved feed and other management practices. As a result, farmers’ interest in livestock genotypes with improved performance is increasing. Transfer of genetic improvement procedures from developed to developing countries has been unsuccessful, particularly in small ruminant production. Popular options, including government managed centralized breeding schemes, with minimal participation of farmers, or more advanced recording schemes that evaluate animals for selection, have failed to make improved animals available to farmers on a sustainable basis. A more widely applied option was the import of improved germplasm, in most cases without having been previously tested for its suitability and adaptation to the target conditions. Thus, there is a clear need for efficient means to facilitate the access by farmers to improved livestock germplasm through sustainable breeding schemes that secure the direct participation and ownership by farmers. Therefore the project will develop community-based breeding plans for resource-poor goat farmers in Zacatecas, Mexico. Representative communities will be actively involved in the project, from the definition of breeding goals to the identification of the most acceptable plan. Plans will be designed according to local institutional arrangements and the communities’ capacity to manage the scheme. Based on the information obtained, different scenarios for selection programmes will be developed. These will vary in terms of complexity and requirements of data and parentage recording in accordance to the institutional arrangements, willingness of the community and the levels of improvement induced already in the region by former government programs. The simplest scenario may include a selection programme for one or two traits measured on the candidates for selection. Other schemes, including a decentralized nucleus owned by the community to fit into the region’s base will be also considered. A more complex breeding programme will involve several selection criteria, measurements of traits not only on selection candidates but also on relatives, detailed data recording and external analysis of data involving technical support from extension services run by the government, NARS or NGO. Deterministic simulation programs (ZPLAN, SelAction) will be employed to evaluate predicted genetic gains in different traits as well as cost versus benefit of such programmes. The essence of the results of these different simulations will be presented to the community pointing out advantages and disadvantages, challenges and risks of each alternative. The community will then have to make a decision. Finally, the community will take the first steps of implementation of the new breeding scheme together with the research team. This will include the joint execution of the first cycle of buck selection. Procedures of tagging or marking animals will be defined and, depending on the scheme chosen, recording and flow of data and results will be designed and tested. Community regulations, responsibilities for the execution and a discipline to be followed will be worked out.