Challenges and Opportunities in Applying Genomic Selection to Ruminants Owned by Smallholder Farmers

Heather M. Burrow, Raphael Mrode, Ally Okeyo Mwai, Mike P. Coffey and Ben J. Hayes
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Heather M. Burrow: Faculty of Science, Agriculture, Business and Law, University of New England, Armidale 2351, Australia
Raphael Mrode: Animal Biosciences, International Livestock Research Institute, Scotland’s Rural College, Roslin Institute Building, Easter Bush, Edinburgh EH125 9RG, UK
Ally Okeyo Mwai: Animal Biosciences, International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi P.O. Box 00100, Kenya
Mike P. Coffey: Animal Breeding and Genomics, Scotland’s Rural College, Roslin Institute Building, Easter Bush, Edinburgh EH125 9RG, UK
Ben J. Hayes: Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, University of Queensland, 306 Carmody Road, St Lucia 4067, Australia

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: Genomic selection has transformed animal and plant breeding in advanced economies globally, resulting in economic, social and environmental benefits worth billions of dollars annually. Although genomic selection offers great potential in low- to middle-income countries because detailed pedigrees are not required to estimate breeding values with useful accuracy, the difficulty of effective phenotype recording, complex funding arrangements for a limited number of essential reference populations in only a handful of countries, questions around the sustainability of those livestock-resource populations, lack of on-farm, laboratory and computing infrastructure and lack of human capacity remain barriers to implementation. This paper examines those challenges and explores opportunities to mitigate or reduce the problems, with the aim of enabling smallholder livestock-keepers and their associated value chains in low- to middle-income countries to also benefit directly from genomic selection.

Keywords: genomic selection; smallholder farmers; beef and dairy cattle; sheep and goats; phenotypes; reference populations; capacity-building; value of genomic information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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