Proposed breeding structure for cattle development in countries in the South Asia Pacific region

Livestock plays a significant role in poverty alleviation and in improving the livelihoods of the rural farmers in the South Asia Pacific (SAP) region. Country reports presented at the IAEA workshop in Mymensingh, Bangladesh in February 2006 revealed that the livestock development programmes implemented by various organizations had very little influence on the genetic improvement of the local cattle population. About 50 to 70% of the cattle in the region are still unimproved, non-descript cattle. Inexistence of herd recording, lack of efficient breed improvement programmes similar to the progeny testing schemes in developed countries, and non availability of proven superior quality breeding animals are among the factors that contribute to the slow progress in improving the genetic merit of local cattle populations in the region. Most of the countries in the SAP are implementing crossbreeding programmes to upgrade the local cattle population to 75% or more of exotic genotype. Crossbreeding programmes involving temperate breeds are often not successful due to incompatibility of the genotypes with farmers' breeding objectives and the production systems. Furthermore, these poorly adapted genotypes often require greater capital investment, thereby increasing the economic burden to the cattle farmers, which has resulted in farmers showing less enthusiasm toward crossbreeding programmes in some instances. Despite the less than universal success of crossbreeding programmes in many of the countries, examples can be found of effective programmes that have emerged from well-structured crossbreeding programmes in the region. The Sahiwal crossbreeding programme in Pakistan and the Operation Flood programme in India are the two prominent programmes that have been implemented by the farmers in these countries.