Chicken genetic diversity, improvement strategies and impacts on egg productivity in Ethiopia: a review

SUMMARY

Chicken production is a vital part of livestock production in Ethiopia. Amongst others, it provides economic, cultural and religious benefits. With few intensive chicken farms in and around cities, the major production system is traditional chicken farming that supports more than 85% of producers and sources of major egg and chicken meat supplies. Unimproved local chickens are commonly used which are characterised by low egg production, late-maturing and long brooding behaviour. As a result, various exotic chicken breeds were imported to different parts of the country with an aim to improve egg and meat production. So far, more than 20 exotic chicken breeds were introduced. The crossbreeding strategy had shown a certain extent of positive impact at both smallholder and intensive farming conditions. However, it was criticised for unplanned implementation, uncontrolled and indiscriminate crossbreeding that led to a genetic dilution of local genotype and reduction in performances of improved breeds under extensive systems. Moreover, it has resulted in the erosion of adaptive local genetic resources to various stressful tropical environments. So, many research findings confirm, the unsustainability of crossbreeding attempts under farmer’s management conditions and in search for optional strategies. As result, a selective breeding (Horro chicken breed) and synthetic breed (DZ-white) were developed and showed better performance under on-farm and on-research stations. Recently, improved Horro breeds are at their 11th generation of selection, whereas DZ-white synthetic breed is at the 5th generation. In general, chicken breeding in Ethiopia is known for lacking a sustainable breed improvement plan, limited selective breeding on targeted economic traits, a lack of a working breeding policy and evaluation for genetic gains using records. Therefore, the current mass importation of the exotic breeds is harming local genetic diversity; so it should be minimised and adapted crossbreds could be focused, besides Horro selective breeding and adoption of DZ white synthetic breed.

KEYWORDS:

• Chicken
• diversity
• genetic improvement
• impact
• productivity
• Ethiopia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chencha Chebo

Mr Chencha is Assistant Professor in Department of Animal Science, Arba Minch University. He has been working as Lecturer and Researcher in Wollo University (from 2009 to 2016) and in Arba Minch University (from 2016 to present). Chencha has supervised five completed MSc projects and currently advising four on-going postgraduate projects. He has eight publications related with Animal breeding on reputable journals. He has several completed and on-going thematic and mega research projects as principal and co-investigator in Universities he has been working. Besides teaching and research work, from 2018 to 2021, he has worked as Director for Livestock and Fisheries Research centre in Arba Minch University. He has a research interest on community-based chicken and small ruminants breeding, and quantitative genetics of livestock. Before joining to University, he has worked as Crocodile farm management expert, in Arba Minch Crocodile Ranch. Chencha has attended international trainings on Poultry Husbandry (Aeres Training Centre International, Barneveld) and Dairy farming (Aeres University of Applied science, Dronten) in the Netherlands, respectively. With this knowledge and skill Chencha is managing his small-scale intensive layers farm and consulting chicken and dairy producers in the community. Currently, he is PhD candidate of Animal Breeding and Genetics in Hawassa University, Ethiopia and conducting his Research project on Association of Hemoglobin variants with morphological, Productive and adaptive traits in Indigenous chickens in Ethiopia. This review paper is part of his seminar work during the PhD study.

Simret Betsha

Simret Betsha, PhD, is a Reproductive Biotechnologist, at Hawassa University, College of Agriculture, School of Animal and Range Sciences, Ethiopia. Of her 17 years of teaching career at Hawassa University, she has been working as assistant professor, section and module team leader and coordination team member of Ethiopian national “Sheep and Goat Productivity Improvement Program.” She was also a postdoctoral fellow of Volkswagen foundation, Germany. Simret served as Animal production expert and team leader in rural women affair in 2001. She was selected to attend the first UNLEASH event through a highly competitive global search process and was awarded a certificate of participation and recognition. Simret has received a special jury award during her participation at Ethiopia-Sudan development market place. Her area of research were, application of assisted reproductive technologies in small and large ruminants, in vitro embryo production and somatic cell nuclear transfer, gene expression analysis, morphological and genetic characterization of poultry, small and large ruminants. She has published fifteen (15) peer reviewed articles. Her Research ID is orcid.org/ 0000-0002-3322-0670.

Aberra Melesse

Prof Dr. Aberra Melesse is a full Professor at the School of Animal and Range Sciences of Hawassa University. He received his PhD degree in Animal Breeding (Poultry Breeding) at Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany in the year 2000. He served in different leading positions including Head of the Department of General Agriculture, Head of Department of Animal and Range Sciences and Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture at Hawassa University. Prof Melesse won various research awards that include a postdoctoral researcher position at Langston University, Oklahoma, USA and investigated effect of flushing on the reproductive performances of meat goats; he was elected fellow of DAAD as Visiting Researcher at Martin-Luther University, Halle-Saale, Germany where he conducted a comprehensive study on the nutrient compositions and in vitro digestibility of leaves, pods and seeds of Moringa stenopetala; he was elected Research Fellow of Food Security Centre funded by DAAD as Visiting Post-doc Scholar at University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart) where he evaluated the nutritive value of different tree parts of two Moringa species; and he was also elected Research Guest Scientist of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for experienced researchers at University of Hohenheim where he investigated 48 local feed materials for their nutrient compositions and methane production potentials.