First Genomics
Breeding Program to Benefit Poultry Industry
USAgNet - 10/06/2008
The first breeding program in the world to use an entire
animal genome is beginning under the direction of university scientists and two
of the largest international poultry breeding companies.
The project will test a novel way to select poultry for
traits that are difficult or costly to measure or are not highly hereditary.
Traits of interest include bone density, productivity, animal well-being, feed
efficiency, yield, egg quality, growth, robustness and disease resistance.
"Finding individual genes responsible for these traits
is terribly difficult," Muir said. "Our solution is to use a genomics
strategy that is effective because it gets us simultaneously close to all genes
and for all possible traits."
This new strategy is called whole genome selection.
Muir is partnering with Hans Cheng of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture and the poultry breeding companies Hendrix Genetics in the
Using blood to extract DNA from a chick, the breeding value
of a particular bird is calculated based on a panel of 60,000 genetic markers,
called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs. These
SNPs are evenly spaced throughout the chicken's genome.
"Using SNPs automates the
process, thus making selection fast and cheap," he said. "The animals
for breeding can be selected as early as one day of age based on analysis of
the genetic markers, which could save vast amounts of money."
This technique could be used on other species, but is being
tested first on poultry due to their short gestation period. Every 23 weeks
scientists will have data on new offspring to determine the effectiveness of
the method.
"Poultry has the shortest generation interval of the
major agricultural species, and improvements in poultry breeding have
tremendous economic potential," Muir said.
The participating companies represent about half of the
world's poultry industry. Cobb-Vantress supplies
about 50 percent of the broilers internationally and Hendrix Genetics about the
same for chickens used for egg production.
The USDA is providing $2.5 million for the research, with
another $2.5 million match from the companies. The corporations also are
supplying additional research resources, such as birds, facilities and labor to
collect trait measures, making the true value of the effort in excess of $10
million.
Findings of the study will be published and, if the
technique proves successful, the method may be adopted by other poultry
breeders and breeders of livestock in general.
In the last 40 years, poultry production has grown more than
fivefold, making it the primary meat consumed in the
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