»BREEDING & GENETICS
gathered for males. With regard to egg
production, males have been selected for
use as breeders using family based selection. Data on how a male’s female relatives
perform as layers was used to determine
a male’s breeding value for egg laying.
With family based selection, full brothers
have the same breeding value assigned to
them. Each brother got half of his genes
from mom and half from dad, but not the
same half. With genomic techniques, it is
possible to select among the brothers to
October 11 - 13, 2011 Ocean City, Maryland
Sponsored by Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc.
46th National Meeting on Poultry Health and Processing
;nd the one carrying the single nucleotide
polymorphisms most likely to positively
affect egg laying in the progeny.
Selection for any trait that has relied on
family based selection can be improved
with genomic selection. “Traits like feed
conversion and gain per day are relatively
easy to measure for individual birds,” said
Dr. Rachel Hawken, director of biotechnology, Cobb-Vantress. “But traits like
improved livability can’t be measured on
an individual level.”
What are SNPs?
Combined Session
Poultry Health Session
Single nucleotide polymorphisms,
or SNPs (pronounced “snips”), are
DNA sequence variations that occur
when a single nucleotide, adenine
(A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), or guanine (G), in the genome sequence
is altered. For example, a SNP
might change the DNA sequence
AAGGCTAA to ATGGCTAA. For a
variation to be considered a SNP,
it must occur in at least 1% of the
population.
Processing/Food Safety Session
Hawken explained that genomic selection opens new opportunities for improving
the rate of progress on traits like livability.
At hatch, breeding companies can place
pedigree stock in “challenging environments.” Data on the performance of birds
under challenging conditions would be
correlated with their SNP data and this
information can be used to select sires
and dams from the birds raised on the
pedigree farms.
For details and to register, contact:
Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc.
www.dpichicken.org or dpi@dpichicken.com
How it works
Chickens have hundreds of thousands of
SNPs in their genome. Phenotype information like growth rate, feed conversion and
rate of lay is gathered from individuals within
pedigree populations, and this is correlated
with the individuals’ SNPs. With the use of
