Journal of Animal Breeding and Genomics (J Anim Breed Genom)
Indexed in KCI
OPEN ACCESS, PEER REVIEWED
pISSN 1226-5543
eISSN 2586-4297
Review

Community based livestock breeding programs in Bangladesh: Present status and challenges

1Division of Animal and Dairy Science, Chungnam National University, Dajeon 34134, South Korea
2Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh-2202, Bangladesh

Correspondence to Mohammad Shamsul Alam Bhuiyan, E-mail: msabhuiyan@gmail.com

Volume 1, Number 2, Pages 69-76, December 2017.
Journal of Animal Breeding and Genomics 2017, 1(2), 77-84. https://doi.org/10.12972/jabng.20170009
Received on 5 December, 2017, Accepted on 26 December, 2017, Published on December 31, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 Korean Society of Animal Breeding and Genetics.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0).

ABSTRACT

Community-based breeding (CBB) is a farmer-participatory approach having common interest to conserve and improve their genetic resources under low-input production system. In Bangladesh, the history of CBB for livestock species is quite recent and so far, several breeding programs have been implemented in a limited scale mostly initiated and supported by academic and research institutions but government is being moved. Some of these programs have shown promising results related to community herd’s/flock’s production performance and farmers’ livelihood improvements, particularly with Red Chittagong cattle, Black Bengal goat and Indigenous chicken. Farmers’ participations are encouraging in those breeding programs. However, like other developing countries, implementation of long-term and sustainable community-based breeding programs (CBBPs) is a major challenge due mainly to short-term funding commitment from national and international donor agencies, lack of government commitment and rapid urbanization. The experiences gained from the previous CBBPs indicate that self-sustained programs operation is almost impossible under smallholder production systems where continuous technical and financial support services are needed. Taken together, institutional and infrastructural arrangement for functional breed society formation and for technical supports from local and national government office, financial assurance at least for complementary services and farmers’ participation as owners of the programs are essential for successful implementation and sustainability of a breeding program in a wider scale.

KEYWORDS

Community-based breeding, smallholders, livestock, low-input system, Bangladesh

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was carried out with the financial support of “Brain Korea 21 plus” program at the Department of Animal Science and Biotechnology, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.

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