Dr. Pauline Aad, Associate Professor at the Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) Faculty of Natural and Applied Science (FNAS), received this year’s Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD) Prize for Scientific Innovation, awarded by the Arab League, for her work on improving the local Awassi sheep breed so that they provide more meat. Dr. Aad, who specializes in Animal Breeding and Reproduction, conducted her research in partnership with Dr. Khaleel. Jawasreh from the Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) and Ahmad H. Al Amareen from the Jordanian National Agriculture research Center (NARC).
Dr. Aad and her colleagues secured the first place in the AOAD Prize competition among 23 different researchers from 9 Arab countries, and her achievement has been recognized by the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture. Dr. Aad’s award put Lebanon in first place, ahead of other countries and institutions with major agriculture universities. “Coming out ahead of other Major Ag Universities as an applied science faculty speaks to the freedom of research that is allowed at NDU,” said Dr. Aad.
Dr. Aad’s research focused on introducing the callipyge gene (CLPG) into the local Awassi breed of sheep, “We accomplished the gene introgression through crossbreeding, not genetic engineering, so as to keep it cost effective and easy to implement for local farmers.”
Dr. Aad’s findings were that the new gene improved the Awassi sheep positively in a number of ways. The gene increased the weight of the sheep at weaning – the point where they stop feeding on milk – having them grow faster without making them harder to deliver. The crossbreeds ended up not only producing more meat of better quality, but also preserving their characteristic fatty tails, widely considered to be a desired Awassi cut.
The first of the resulting research papers was published in Q2 peer-reviewed journal Veterinary World, with the follow-up paper published in the Q1 peer-reviewed journal Animals. The publications are open access, so the full research can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2019.783-788, and https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani9080517. Meanwhile, JUST and the Jordanian NARC work closely with local farmers to adopt these improvements to improve their farming systems. As for Dr. Aad, “my work in Lebanon continues to be to improve local sheep and goat breeds to better serve farmers especially with the current challenges of water quality, climate change, food scarcity, etc., they face.”