ILRI’s research program on Animal Science for Sustainable Productivity (ASSP) is a global program working to increase the productivity of livestock systems in developing countries through high-quality animal science (breeding, nutrition and animal health) and livestock systems research. Led by Iain Wright, the program focuses on increasing the supply and quality of animal feed from forage and crop residues, developing animal breeding strategies that are suitable for small scale farmers and identification and control of diseases that impair animal health. We also test how new approaches to increasing animal productivity can be implemented in different livestock and farming systems.
The Program has been created to bring together, for the first time, teams working on animal feeding, animal breeding, animal health and livestock systems. This integration is expected to allow a more unified approach to bring the applied animal sciences to bear on the challenge of sustainably increasing livestock productivity. Within the context of livestock systems, it is rarely possible to isolate the different aspects of animal science. For example, introduction of more productive genotypes usually requires better feeding and animal health care. On the other hand improvement in feed availability opens up opportunities for smallholders to keep more productive breeds.
Genetics & Breeding
Okeyo Mwai leads the Genetics & Breeding team whose overall objective is to develop and promote breeding strategies and interventions that sustainably improve animal productivity in emerging smallholder market-oriented livestock production systems. Currently, huge gaps exist between potential and realized productivity. The development of decision support tools for characterizing production systems is key to our work as is the characterization of cattle, sheep, goat, pig and chicken breeds/populations in order to inform better use. We need to improve on the value chain focus for the livestock producer in our future work to ensure losses are minimized and farmers nutritional/economic needs are met.
Led by Henry Kiara, The Animal Health team seeks the prioritization of Animal Health (AH) constraints to inform technology development, animal health service delivery and to contribute to an animal health policy framework. We focus on improvement of productivity of livestock through identifying AH constraints in poor livestock keepers systems, develop and introduce appropriate intervention strategies with partners; inform on types of technologies needed or to be modified to fit specific livestock production system.
The key driving question will then be, if the farmer/livestock keeper invests in breeding, health or feed technologies, where are you likely to get the best outcome? The animal health goes beyond infectious diseases to other health issues that affect productivity such as herd health management – is there new knowledge or is application of existing technologies the constraint?
Led by Michael Blummel, the Animal Feeding team recognizes that feed is a key issue for livestock productivity and its costs are rising all the time. The Animal Feeding team seeks to increase livestock productivity from scarce natural resource base, particularly land and water while delivering more feed of higher quality from crop residues and agricultural by-products. This involves establishing a research platform and tools to support feed research that ensures that existing feed resources are used better.