The document discusses a project aimed at enhancing community-based breeding programs in Africa through parentage testing and genetic improvement, particularly for goats. It outlines the development of a marker toolkit for tracing pedigrees and improving productivity and food security. A database will be created to profile selected sires with favorable traits to inform breeding decisions and avoid inbreeding.

1. Mobilizing biosciences for Africa’s development
ILRI APM, Addis Ababa, 15-17 May 2013
This document is licensed for use under a Crea3ve Commons A6ribu3on‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
May 2013
Strategic lessons:
S. Osama, S. Benor and M. Agaba
INTRODUCTION
In a community based breeding it is o;en difficult to
trace the progeny of selected sires with desired
market traits.
To enhance community based breeding
effecEveness, it is important to perform parentage
tesEng and tracing.
Breed improvement needs accurate pedigree to
avoid inbreeding and molecular markers can
effecEvely be used to develop a parentage control
tool.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
PURPOSE
The principal research focus of this project will be on
improving food and nutriEonal security in the project
countries. This will be geared towards improving
producEvity through efficient geneEc improvement.
The aim of this part of the project is to develop a
highly informaEve marker tool kit which will be used
for parentage tesEng for goat improvement
programs. This will be done over successive
generaEons in order to trace the pedigree of the
genotypes with good breeding value that goes into
the next generaEon.
Blood sample collecEon on FTA cards from candidate breed bucks idenEfied by
farmers using choice experiments
1. Influencing decisions
• A database will be developed containing the
geneEc profile of the sires with desirable market
traits which will be selected to go into the
community based breeding sires of the given
country
2. Delivering science
• To provide pedigree informaEon in order to
esEmate the individual breeding values of the
progeny in breeding programs
• A set of markers with a high ability to discriminate
individuals which can be used as a tool for tesEng
parentage in subsequent breeding generaEons
Parentage and Identity Testing of Goat for
Improved Community Based Breeding Practices
Data analysis
Candidate bucks genotyped on a set of 25
SSR DNA markers at BecA ILRI hub, Nairobi.