Advanced training course on ‘statistical analysis of ACGG on-farm data’ 12–16 June 2017 in Addis Ababa

After two previous training courses on animal genetics in October 2015 and in February 2016, the African Chicken Genetic Gains (ACGG) program will run its third advanced training course on 12–16 June 2017 at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

This course aims to increase collaboration between the participants and contribute to the ACGG program’s goal of increasing smallholder chicken productivity in Africa. Participants in the course will become familiar with the ACGG program and establish a network. They are also expected to benefit from not only the material covered in the course but also from the network in their ongoing research projects.

The subject and main focus of this course is statistical analysis of ACGG chicken performance data.

The course primarily targets participants involved in the ACGG program in the three project countries: Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania. Participants should have an MSc degree or higher and are required to have a basic understanding of statistics. This course builds on the previous ACGG course on statistical analysis, given in 2016, in that R will be used as the main software. Prior knowledge of the software R is highly recommended. The maximum number of participants is 25.

After taking the course, participants will:

• Gain a basic understanding of R software, a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.
• Understand the structure of data sets obtained in ACGG.
• Be able to retrieve, process, quality check and clean up data sets for statistical analysis.
• Have an understanding of discrete and continues variables in the data.
• Be able to choose the correct statistical methodology to analyze the data set.
• Be able to perform analyses with modules from the R software packages and make inferences.
• Be able to apply the hands-on experience to their own research projects.

Activities will, in a typical ACGG fashion, include lectures, practical exercises to apply knowledge in analysing a real data set, and presentations and discussions of solutions to exercises.

Trainers will be John Bastiaansen from Wageningen University, and Raphael Mrode and Jane Poole from ILRI.

In addition to the 15 participants from the three ACGG project countries, 10 openings are available for international students.

For registration and information on costs, please contact Tadelle Dessie t.dessie@cgiar.org or Ayda Tegenu a.tegenu@cgiar.org.