ABSTRACT Village chickens are ubiquitous in smallholder farming systems, contributing to household, local and national economies under diverse environmental, economic and cultural settings.

However, they are raised in challenging environments where productivity is low while mortality is high. There is much interest in utilizing indigenous genetic resources to produce a chicken

that is resilient to its environment, while at the same time providing the basis of an economically sustainable enterprise. Globally, however, a wide variety of interventions have so far

proved unable to deliver sustainable improvements. Here we show that regional differences in trait preferences and parasite burden are associated with distinct chicken gene pools, probably

multidisciplinary evidence to support previous observations that sustainable poultry development interventions for smallholder farmers, including breeding programmes, should be locally

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Read our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS TRADE-OFFS IN THE EXTERNALITIES OF PIG PRODUCTION ARE NOT INEVITABLE Article Open access 11 April 2024 GENOMIC

ANALYSIS OF NIGERIAN INDIGENOUS CHICKENS REVEALS THEIR GENETIC DIVERSITY AND ADAPTATION TO HEAT-STRESS Article Open access 26 January 2024 IMPACT OF IMPROVED SMALL-SCALE LIVESTOCK FARMING

ON HUMAN NUTRITION Article Open access 08 January 2021 DATA AVAILABILITY The bioclimatic variables that used in this study are available from ‘WorldClim’ (http://www.worldclim.org/). The

land cover variable data are available from the ‘Harmonized World Soil Database’ (http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/External-World-soil-database/HTML/index.html?sb=1). All other

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association studies. _Nat. Methods_ 11, 407–409 (2014). Article  CAS  Google Scholar  Download references ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank the Chicken Health for Development project team members

and the farmers and development agents in the Jarso and Horro districts for their assistance; D. Hume and G. Banos for helpful comments on drafts of the manuscript; and the Biotechnology and

Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Scottish Government for providing funding for the ‘Reducing the impact of

infectious disease on poultry production in Ethiopia’ project under the Combating Infectious Diseases of Livestock for International Development (CIDLID) program (BB/H009396/1, BB/H009159/1

and BB/H009051/1). J.M.B., T.D. and O.H. are supported by CGIAR fund donors http://www.cgiar.org/our-funders/. AUTHOR INFORMATION Author notes * Deceased: Pete Kaiser. AUTHORS AND

AFFILIATIONS * Institute of Infection and Global Health, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Judy M. Bettridge, Zelalem G. Terfa, Paul Wigley & Robert M. Christley * LiveGene - CTLGH,

International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Judy M. Bettridge, Zelalem G. Terfa, Takele T. Desta, Tadelle Dessie & Olivier Hanotte * International Livestock

Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya Judy M. Bettridge * The Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Science, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Androniki Psifidi 

& Pete Kaiser * Department of Clinical Sciences and Services, Royal Veterinary College, University of London, Hatfield, UK Androniki Psifidi * Cells, Organisms and Molecular Genetics,

School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK Takele T. Desta & Olivier Hanotte * Animal Breeding and Genomics , Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The

Netherlands Maria Lozano-Jaramillo Authors * Judy M. Bettridge View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Androniki Psifidi View author

publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Zelalem G. Terfa View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Takele T.

Desta View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Maria Lozano-Jaramillo View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed 

Google Scholar * Tadelle Dessie View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Pete Kaiser View author publications You can also search for this

author inPubMed Google Scholar * Paul Wigley View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Olivier Hanotte View author publications You can also

search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Robert M. Christley View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS R.M.C., O.H., P.W.,

P.K. and T.D. conceived and designed the research; J.M.B., Z.G.T., T.T.D. and P.K. undertook field sampling; A.P., T.T.D., P.K. and O.H. performed genomic analysis; J.M.B. and R.M.C.

undertook statistical analysis of epidemiological data; Z.G.T. and R.M.C. undertook statistical analysis of socio-economic data; M.L.-J. performed ecological niche modelling; R.M.C., J.M.B.,

A.P. and O.H. wrote the paper with inputs from other authors. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Robert M. Christley. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The authors declare no

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and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Bettridge, J.M., Psifidi, A., Terfa, Z.G. _et al._ The role of local adaptation in sustainable production of village chickens. _Nat

Sustain_ 1, 574–582 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0150-9 Download citation * Received: 25 January 2018 * Accepted: 04 September 2018 * Published: 15 October 2018 * Issue Date:

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