Hatching a plan for the perfect chicken
RESEARCHERS in Ethiopia are embarking on a quest to create the perfect chicken for African farmers with an unlikely ally — a Belgian conceptual artist who has spent 20 years crossbreeding indigenous chickens, from China and Egypt to Senegal and Cuba.
Incubated Worlds, a research and breeding centre in the capital, Addis Ababa, will also house a permanent art installation showcasing the work of Koen Vanmechelen, including photographs, videos and books of chickens’ genetic codes.
‘‘It’s the most sexy chicken coop in the world,’’ said Vanmechelen, whose Cosmopolitan Chicken Project set out to create a chicken carrying the genes of all the planet’s breeds.
The artist told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that each successive generation of Cosmopolitan Chickens was more resilient, lived longer, and was less susceptible to diseases, proving the importance of genetic diversity.
At the centre, scientists from the Nairobibased International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and local partners will compare different types of Ethiopian chickens and crossbreed them naturally with others, including Vanmechelen’s.
A quarter of the world’s 815 million undernourished people are in SubSaharan Africa, and climate conditions are worsening hunger, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says.
According to the African Development Bank, feeding children an egg a day could prevent stunting, a condition that affects some 58 million children on the continent.
Olivier Hanotte, a scientist with ILRI in Addis Ababa, said crossbreeding Vanmechelen’s birds with local varieties could result in a breed that was healthier and more resilient, but they must also be productive.
‘‘What we want is . . . an animal who produces eggs, which would grow relatively fast and can reach a weight of two to three kilos in a minimum amount of time.’’
He praised Vanmechelen for doing what scientists could not — creating a unique population of chickens that gave a snapshot of the genetic diversity of birds outside Ethiopia.
‘‘That is a fantastic resource for us,’’ he said. ‘‘There’s no way that, as a scientist, I would have gotten a grant for 20 years to do this sort of experiment.’’ — Thomson Reuters Foundation