Minutes of a workshop on Developing Small Ruminant Breeding programs

Abstract

In Ethiopia there has been different attempts at developing breeding programs either for selective breeding or crossbreeding. Different institutions also follow varying approaches including nucleus and community-based schemes. The different efforts need to be harmonized, and pilot activities taken to scale to bring about sustainable change to lives of rural people. With this in mind, ICARDA in partnership with ILRI, ATA and EIAR convened a workshop during December 17-18, 2015 in Debre Berhan. The objectives of the workshop were to review and synthesize lessons learned in sheep genetic improvement activities so far; design a detailed plan for small ruminants genetic improvement and dissemination of improved genetics; Identify enabling environment for the breeding programs to succeed; and agree on roles, responsibilities and the timetable for the implementation of the breeding program.