Biobanking of indigenous chicken breeds

Indigenous chicken production is essential for sociology-economic development and improving the livelihoods of Livestock farmers in nearly all rural households In Sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. Productivity improvement of chicken is a key driver in addressing some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5 (no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being and gender equality). The objective of this project is to preserve African and south-east Asian indigenous poultry biodiversity for subsequent use to enhance resilience, productivity and support future response to new breeding requirements of the tropical poultry industry. Activities of the Project include:

1. Biobanking of indigenous poultry using Reproductive Germ Cells (RGCs) techniques and gene banking these unique populations for discovery of genes of economic importance (a-Regional trainings on advanced reproduction technologies for cryo-conservation of African chicken Genetic Resources, b-cryo-conservation of African chicken genetic resources using the gonadal primordial germ cells (PGC) technique, c- Genome-wide characterization of genetic variants and putative regions under selection in meat-type, egg-type and disease tolerant chicken lines)
2. Adopting/developing the surrogate host technology for the conservation of indigenous chicken genetic resources and dissemination of elite breeds (a- Developing and breeding the surrogate breeding stock at ILRI-Nairobi and KALRO Naivasha, b- Transplant the cryopreserved indigenous chicken breeds’ PGCs to the host embryos and analyse the pedigree of the offspring using SNP chips, c- Evaluate the mutation rate of PGCs for de novo single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) in comparison to other stem cell lineages)