 Hello everyone. It is my pleasure today to talk to you about Animal Science for Sustainable Productivity Program here at ILRI. Why do we have the ASSP Program? The rationale for establishing ASSP at ILRI was in recognition that the identification and testing of technological solutions is one of the main basis of ILRI's strategic agenda, which is to enhance small holder livelihoods through livestock keeping. And ASSP's main objective is to integrate livestock technologies within the wider production systems, leading to increased productivity. The reasoning is that integrated approaches crucial in bringing together applied animal sciences to bear on the challenge of sustainable increasing livestock productivity. Our work is organized in three main areas, the nutrition which is the feeds and forages group and then the head health and the livestock systems. The breeding team is now under biosciences since last year. What will success look like? ASSP's outputs in the next five to six years will contribute to improved consumption of animal source foods thus improving household nutrition. Through our feeds and forages work we hope to see that researchers, government and development agency staff and others better respond to actual feed constraints and opportunities and make better use of available feed resources. From the head health component we hope that there will be better control of animal diseases by farmers, national, regional and international partners. Other areas of success will include a more effective participation in output markets for livestock products by small holder livestock producers. A more equitable access of women and other disadvantaged groups to the benefits of livestock keeping. And in sustainable intensification we hope for sustainably intensified production systems based on or including livestock. What does ASSP do well? We are proud of our feeds and forages work. For example, the feed assessment tool FIST is now being used in more than 12 countries and we continue to see more demand. My colleague Allent and Ken will talk to you about FIST later today and I hope that we can tell you more about other tools during the course of the IPM or even thereafter. We are proud of our contribution to a paradigm change in crop improvement work through identification, breeding and dissemination of superior food feed, cereal and leguminous crops and so come and pell millet forage cultivars. This has really brought us close collaboration with the crop centers and in the Sierra Pays. We celebrated good publications in this area. Some of these are in repeatable peer-reviewed journals. What does the program do well? We established successful partnerships with a wide range of partners. This can be seen in the large RFOD projects which involve more than livestock science. Examples are Africa Rising, Lives and End-to-Africa projects in Ethiopia, Prosul in Mozambique, CISA and ELFs in South Asia. In 2014 we supported the Government of Ethiopia in developing a livestock master plan. This has been greatly appreciated and is being used as an input into the development of the growth transformation plan too that is ongoing now. And more countries are requesting support of a similar nature. I would like to highlight ASSP Strong Capacity Development Component and as an example just share the story of Lives. Lives project in 2014 supported 28 new students. So at one time they have about 50 plus students. So this is really a great contribution to capacity development and most of our projects do have a large number of MSC and PhD students. What are some of our dull moments? We delivered less than planned in the head health component but I'm happy to report that we have some positive developments now as we have the team leader in place and some activities have started here in Ethiopia and we'll be building on the work in Uganda and Tanzania as part of the livestock and fish therapy. The second area is around integration in some of the sustainable intensification initiatives where we find that crop, soils, livestock and other components are still working in silos so the issue of integration is still missing in some components. We are in the process of developing the sustainable intensification indicators and this will occupy us quite a bit this year. We need to do better in analyzing the economic and socio-economic impacts of our technological interventions especially in some of the ARAFOD projects and our partners always ask this from us. Are there prospects for collaboration with other programs? Yes there are. For example with the feeds and forages biosciences and Beka Il Rehab we could do work on forages putting forages into use at scale with the animal biosciences issues around breeds and feed feeding requirements with food safety and zoonosis we could do combined field assessments and testing of sustainable animal health interventions with PTVC we see opportunities in joint value chain analysis and in supporting countries with the livestock sector analysis and the development of livestock master plans. We see prospects for collaboration with the LIFE loads gender and impact program around joint piloting and testing gender sensitive feeding strategies and animal health interventions. With the livestock systems and environment we could do work in sustainable intensification and feeding strategies in the drylands. With the vaccine platform there is opportunity for field testing vaccines for testing and development of vaccine delivery strategies but I would like to underline that we need to strengthen existing collaboration with other Il Reh programs with the CRPs and with CKMS and CAPDEV. What would a dream alliance look like? To us putting forages into use at scale in small halter systems would really be a dream alliance and that is if we do it at scale and to yield impact. This would bring ASSP, feeds and forages biosciences, Baker Il Reh Hub, LGI, CKMS, CAPDEV and many more. It would indeed be a dream alliance. So I hope we can develop something and take it forward after IPM. I thank you.