**5.1 Current status of the application of genomics in the practice of dairy cattle production in Ethiopia**

Ethiopia was reported to have the largest population (59.5 million heads) of cattle in Africa [34]. This researcher [34] also mentioned in his review article that in Ethiopia, the livestock sector was mainly of smallholder farming system which contributed about 15% of export earnings, 16.5% of the national GDP, 30% of agricultural employment and 35.6% of the agricultural GDP. According to the report of the Central Statistic Agency (CSA) of Ethiopia [35], most of the cattle that were reared by the agrarian community were mostly native breeds which formed about 98.2%; 1.62% of the cattle were crossbreed while the rest 0.18% were of exotic breeds. This author [34] stated that cattle in the country were kept mainly for milk production,

draught power, breeding and beef purposes. Most of the milking cows were indigenous animals with low milk yield, 1.37 litres/day, and with an average of 6 months lactation length. Also, the lactating cows had average of age of about 4 ½ years at first calving and about 25 months calving interval. The cattle were mainly grazed on native pasture and given crop residue supplemental feeding. The dairy cattle production systems in Ethiopia included the rural small holder (crop-livestock) dairy production system, the agro pastoral and pastoral dairy cattle production system, the urban and peri-urban smallholder dairy production system and the commercial dairy cattle production system. The commercial dairy farms mostly kept exotic dairy stock. Though Ethiopia was reported [34] to possess the largest livestock (cattle in particular) population in Africa, the animals had low productivity. There had been lack of improvement in the breeding program, uncontrolled mating/breeding practice, feed shortages, prevalence of diseases, and there was generally poor reproductive performance.

There was thus the need to upgrade the reproductive and productive traits in the dairy cattle. Therefore there had been no report of the application of genomics except for the practice of artificial insemination which however, was also faced with the inefficiency of AI technicians and an ineffective animal breeding practice [34].
