News Archive

ILRI News

Excursions of a biochemical kind: ILRI hosts CUNY–Regeneron ‘power couple’ working to improve the health of African cattle and COVID-19 patients

ILRI’s cloned Boran bull named ‘Tumaini’ (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan) Written by Susan MacMillan & Ekta Patel Part 1 For two months at the start of this year, Jayne Raper, a professor of biological sciences at the City University of New York’s Hunter College (CUNY), in Manhattan, took a...

AgHealth blog

Celebrating Open Access Week 2020 with a focus on ILRI’s open access research on animal and human health

International Open Access Week is an opportunity to raise awareness about open access publishing of research outputs to enable their universal online accessibility. Research outputs are wide-ranging and include articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, book chapters, conference proceedings,...

ILRI News

Remembering Michael Blümmel

It is with great sadness that we report the death of Michael Blümmel , a principal scientist and deputy program leader in the feed and forage development program at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Michael passed away on Monday, 12 Oct 2020, after a short illness in his...

ILRI News

Training researchers virtually when supplies can cross borders but people cannot

Written by Zoë Campbell Contents of the peste des petits ruminants virus antigen rapid test kit [ID Rapid® PPR Antigen, IDVet, France] (photo credit: ILRI/Bryony Anne Jones). In the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, supplies can cross international borders, but the same is not always true for...

ILRI News

International Livestock Research Institute becomes Global Landscapes Forum charter member

(BONN, 12 October 2020) – Over half a billion people in developing countries depend to some extent on farm animals for their livelihoods. Animal-sourced food also plays an important role in nutrition, through providing readily-available proteins and micronutrients. But animal agriculture is also...

ILRI News

When numbers lie

Land surface temperature data from ILRI’s Kapiti Research Station’s validation towers are significantly warmer than expected, prompting concern . Vast disparities in the number of instruments used to validate satellite climate sensors data have woefully underestimated the true peak temperatures of...

ILRI clippings

How viable are schemes to give poor people making and selling ‘informal’ milk greater market access?

Artworks on this page: Various Jugs, by Katie Grobler. A new re port from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) reviews the effectiveness of training and certification schemes designed to give small-scale ‘...

AgHealth blog

Experts review policy innovation to improve milk safety in informal markets

A new research report (Oct 2020) by scientists from the International Institute for Environment and Development ( IIED ) and the International Livestock Research Institute ( ILRI ) reviews the status and policy contexts of informal milk markets in Kenya, Tanzania and Assam (India) to better...

Policies, institutions and livelihoods

Using the livestock master plan process to boost investment in livestock development

A pastoralist takes her livestock to a communally managed water point in Garba Tulla, Isiolo county, northern Kenya (photo Credit:ILRI/Fiona Flintan) . The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the French Agricultural...

ILRI clippings

‘Genomic time travel’ for better African cattle—New paper describes a ‘rich mosaic of traits’ and an ‘evolutionary jolt’

Scientists from ILRI, Korea and other partners have discovered a new set of genetic markers in African cattle that signal beneficial characteristics, with a view to harnessing them for future generations. ‘In a multi-national collaborative effort, scientists have announced the discovery of a new...

ILRI News

A 1,000-year-old ‘Evolutionary Jolt’ helped African cattle adapt to the continent’s multiple challenges

A new study in Nature Genetics retraced 1,000 years of African pastoralist cattle breeding, identifying how cattle acquired the traits that enabled them to spread throughout the continent NAIROBI, Kenya (30 Sep 2020)— Scientists sifting through the DNA of indigenous African cattle breeds announced...

ILRI clippings

ILRI’s Kapiti Research Station to serve as conservancy and critical wildlife corridor for Nairobi National Park

ILRI’s Kapiti Research Station (photo credit: ILRI/Jake Meyers). ‘Nairobi National Park wildlife ecosystem has more than doubled its land size to 78,000 acres after two institutions agreed to integrate their land with the wildlife conservancy. On Thursday, 24 Sep 2020, the Kapiti Research Station...