Senegal Dairy Genetics project:Work package 2 update

Karen Marshall

FoodAfrica annual workshop, Kampala, Uganda27-28 January 2014

Work package partners & objectives

ILRI, EISMV, HU, MTT, project farmers

To identify and promote utilisation of the most appropriate dairy breed-types for more productive and profitable dairy enterprises in selected production systems in Senegal

Major activities 2013

1. Breed comparison Socio-economic study: gendered Major field component, 18 month monitoring Breed-type determined through genetic analysis 2 sites: region of Thies and department of Mbacké (Touba)

2. Analysis of policies on dairy, particularly germplasm production and delivery systems

3. Capacity building

Breed comparison: project sites

Field staff recruitment: 2 female and 4 male, mobilised by motorbikes(due to cultural / religious reasons could not place female staff at Touba)

Project sensitization in sites Survey to identify suitable dairy households: 623 households surveyed,288 identified as suitable (difficult to locate households as no complete list; lower number of cross-breeds than expected)

Recruitment of 259 dairy households into project: individual visits plus small group workshops; given project leaflet and signed consent

Project launch events (n=3): 135 male and 74 female participants, as individual dairy farmers and 11 organisations

Activities January to April 2013

Breed comparison: initiation

Project field staffThies site

Célestin Muyeneza (MSc in animal production, University of Dakar)

Ndeye Racky Ndiaye(MSc in population genetics, University of Dakar)

Touba site

Mame Diara Ndiaye (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, University of Dakar)

Mamadou Lo (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine,

University of Dakar)

Sene Moudou(Diploma of Livestock Production, CNFTEIA, St Louis)

Elhadji Sow (final year DVM, University of Dakar)

Farmer sensitisation activities

Project launch events

National & site level launch at Thies Ministers representative

Site level launch at Touba

Baseline survey: two survey tools – household head and adult female (259 households)(due to religious reasons unable to interview females in some households)

Longitudinal survey round 1: socio-economic + individual animal data; animals ear-tagged; each staff attached to ~40 households(virtual ear tags used when farmers did not allow tagging; ‘transhumant’ survey developed)

Longitudinal survey round 2: socio-economic + milk yield. Farmers trained in use of recording sheets and milk measuring(procurement difficulties for field equipment, esp. milk jugs)

Longitudinal survey round 3: socio-economic + milk yield (241 households)(implemented automated animal identification system in database; recapture of missing / incorrect data)

Activities April to December 2013

Breed comparison: socio-economic data

Ear tags

Project animals number 3100 with 670 lactating females, 105 different breed-types (Dec 2013)

Field staff working with project dairy farmers

Type of information collected on dairy households

Continual recording for 18 month+ period

Costs

• Labour • Feed + water• Health-care• Housing• Mating• Marketing• Replacement

animals• Equipment• Co-operative fees

Benefits

• Milk & milk products: sold or consumed

• Manure• Sale of dairy animals• Sale of sire services

Animal & herd level

• Animal information: breed, age, parity, last calving date, mating date, pregnancy status, date of birth, dry-off date

• Milk records• Entries into herd:

births, purchase etc.• Exits from herd:

deaths, sale etc.

Example survey table

Gendered information on all costs + benefits

Milk measuring

Body condition score: collected on all lactating females in selected survey rounds

Milk quality (protein and fat): obtained on 310 animals using field-based milk analyser

Body weights and body measurements

Hair samples for DNA analysis and subsequent breed composition: first 104 samples genotyped

Activities June to December 2013

Breed comparison: other data

Milk quality

Weights and body measurements

… but not always so easy

DNA samples

Preliminary SNP analysis results

104 animals: clusters represent the different breed-types

Data manaManagement of field data

Each field staff enters own survey data into CSPRO data entry interface Project database

manager, in Senegal

Data collation, data checking, back-up

Recollection of missing / erroneous data

MySQL database

User accessFarmer reports

Policy analysis

Generated via desk-top review combined with key informant interviews (in progress)

Capacity building: project farmers

Use of recording sheets, milk measurements

Domestic biogas, with Heifer International Senegal 9 training events 146 female and 366

male farmers

Farmer biogas training

Capacity building: field staff

Survey implementation + data -entry 4 training events of 5

days Trained by ILRI and

EISMV staff

Professor Missohou from EISMV supporting training of field staff

Capacity building: students

Program Country Gender

PhD Cameroon Male

PhD (attachment)

Nigeria Female

Masters Benin Male

Masters Finland Female

DMV thesis component

Senegal Male

Main challenges 2013

Unable to establish ILRI hosting arrangement in Senegal

High number of project activities (to compensate for time lost

due to project relocation)

Large volume of project data

… but excellent project team (n=23) & project partner relations

2014 work-plan

Completion of field-work (longitudinal surveys + DNA sampling)

Analysis of survey data Household clustering Breed assignment to individual animals + clustering Estimate of cost & benefits for each breed x household cluster (dependant on

group size) Socio-economic breed comparison

Further farmer trainings combined with feedback workshops

Policy and value-chain analysis

Support to project students

Additional activities e.g. aflatoxin & brucellosis testing, feed analysis

FoodAfrica supervisory board visit to project site

http://senegaldairy.wordpress.com/