As the first phase of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish comes to an end (a Livestock CRP will start in January 2017), each of the program’s flagships is taking time to tease out key lessons that help inform the second phase of the program.

Livestock & Fish Genetics synthesis workshop participants (photo credit: ILRI/L.Njeri)

The Animal Genetics flagship held a synthesis writeshop 10–11 October in Nairobi, Kenya, which was attended by 20 scientists from the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dryland Areas (ICARDA), WorldFish, Wageningen UR, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), including the past three flagship program leaders.

Over the two days, the participants mapped 56 projects that focused partly or entirely on animal genetics and were part of the Livestock and Fish body of work; they also identified nearly 100 key achievements of the program, which were mapped onto four activity clusters (assessments, new and improved breeds, delivery and use, and breakthrough technologies).

Based on these achievements, participants then collectively identified possible topics for briefs and eventually settled on six.

• Lessons on breeding programs  (taking into account institutional, capacity and policy issues);
• Development, application and assessment of novel genetic tools;
• Incentives for livestock recording;
• Delivery of improved genetics;
• Use of value chains for improving genetics:
  • Lessons on the process of establishing value chains
  • The value chain approach: a tool for focusing genetic interventions

By the end of the writeshop, four of the six briefs were about 90% drafted and the remaining two halfway completed.

The briefs, which are expected to be finalised by mid-November, will inform phase two of the Livestock research program.

Read notes of the meeting at: http://livestock-fish.wikispaces.com/Livestock_gene_synthesis