Tagline: State of the art facility for measuring livestock phenotypes
Champion: Karen Marshall
Team: ILRI livestock productivity groups & international experts on livestock phenomics
Phenomics has been been described as the next big challenge, with our ability to characterize phenomes (the full set of phenotypes of an individual) now significantly lagging behind our ability to characterize genomes (see Nature Review Genetics 2010 11:855-66).
We need a state of the art African-based facility for measuring livestock phenotypes
International efforts on livestock phenomics are underway, but we cannot effectively engage due to lack of appropriate facilities to measure livestock for the diverse range of traits that we are interested in (from growth to feed efficiency, to rumen & gut microbiome, to gene expression etc.) at the frequency we require.
Establishing a state of the art livestock phenomics facility at ILRI would allow us to, amongst others:
Help fill the very large data gap we have on livestock performance in developing country livestock systems: either by directly measuring animals within the facility (under equivalent input levels to our target production systems), or by allowing us to develop better (quicker, cheaper) means of measuring animals in-situ
Test livestock interventions (such as combinations of breed x feed x health) in a controlled environment, reducing the resources required to perform such experiments (this can be followed by piloting the more promising interventions in-situ)
Provide the first predictions of African livestock performance under changed heat / humidity (by having a climate controlled environment – such facilities exist elsewhere particularly for pigs / poultry)
Take better advantage of the genomics revolution (by linking phenomics and genomics)
Provide a unique facility for use by national partners and / or replication in other locations in Africa
Position ILRI to be at the forefront of the upcoming phenomics revolution!
Please join me in championing this idea!
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