Design von dörflichen Zuchtprogrammen für lokale Schafrassen in Äthiopien

Ethiopia has about 24 million sheep which represent an important source of income and protein in the diets of the poor; however, off-take is low. The increasing scarcity of feed and poor flock health management are major constraints. Increased human population and urbanization have increased the demand for animal protein in the country and given place to opportunities for market-oriented productivity improvement. The absence of genetic improvement programs represents a major constraint to achieving sustainable improvements. The project will develop community-based breeding strategies for resource-poor sheep owners in the highlands of Ethiopia. Representative communities will be actively involved in the project, from the definition of breeding goals and selection criteria to the identification of the most appropriate and acceptable strategy. Strategies will be designed to take full advantage of existing institutions and already available secondary information. An important element of the project will be the understanding of institutional issues that can underpin successful institutional arrangements, from the production through to markets. Capacity building to improve the ability of communities to manage the breeding programs will be embedded in the project. 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 ram 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