ABSTRACT
In planning increased animal productivity in subsaharan environments, a principal requirement is for information allowing the usefulness of major animal types to be confidently predicted for different ecological zones, production systems, management levels, disease situations, nutritional resources. The challenge in most areas of Subsaharan Africa is to synchronize germ plasm resources with the environmental resources most favored by economic considerations. The tsetse fly which transmits animal trypanosomiasis is a major constraint in expanded cattle production in the humid African lowlands. Nutritive and disease/parasite environments characteristic of much of Subsaharan Africa generally favor the use of cattle with varying percentages contributed by indigenous breeds. In the humid, tsetse infested zone with 6 percent of the cattle, the exploitation of trypanotolerant breeds of cattle offers one of the most important approaches to the control of the continental problem of animal African trypanosomiasis.
