Genome wide association study in Indigenous poultry breeds/varieties

Abstract

Indigenous poultry rearing presents a viable opportunity for the rural population to ensure food security, self employment and improved livelihoods while contributing to national economic growth. Native chicken has been found to be more genetically diverse, well adapted, and more resistant to local pests and diseases. The indigenous chicken therefore exhibits a large genetic pool from which genes of interest can be exploited to provide a basis for genetic improvement and diversification to produce breeds that are adapted to varied conditions for the benefit of farmers in developing countries. To minimize all these undesired effects, genome wide marker assisted selection play crucial role in native as well as high performing poultry population. Although chicken array is commercially available containing SNPs information mostly from exotic/commercial chicken lines, but this chip lacks the SNPs data of most of the Indigenous native chicken breeds. So, there is an urgent need for developing a high-density chip containing SNPs information specific to the Indigenous native chicken breeds that will be used for selecting the elite native germplasm of India and other countries. Thus, searching the whole genome for better quality birds may not only improve productivity of birds but also nullify the un-intentional inclusion of undesired traits during selecting the elite parents, which may devise the concerted and systematic mechanism to augment performance of birds at a very faster rate than the traditional/conventional selection alone.