Inbreeding depression for economically important traits of Mazandaran native fowls

Abstract

1. The objective was to investigate inbreeding depression for some economic traits of Mazandaran native fowls using data collected from 1992 to 2012 (21 generations) using a REML animal model of significant fixed and random effects with inbreeding of birds and dams as covariates.

2. The mean inbreeding coefficient (F) for the whole population and dams was 4.67% and 4.12%, respectively, and most of the inbred birds (75.79%) and inbred dams (72.58%) had F < 12.5%.

3. Individual and dam inbreeding trends were 0.55% and 0.53% per year.

4. Inbreeding depression for body weight at hatch, at 8 weeks and 12 weeks of age, age at sexual maturity, weight at sexual maturity, egg weight at 1st d of laying and average egg weight at 28, 30 and 32 weeks of laying due to a 1% increase in individual inbreeding were −0.11 g, −3.1 g, −1.3 g, 0.15 d, 0.59 g, −0.05 g and −0.03 g, respectively.

5. A 1% increase in maternal inbreeding resulted in a reduction of 0.06, 0.6 and 3.6 g in body weight at hatch, 8 weeks and 12 weeks of age.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Peer Berg for providing the EVA-program, Karin Meyer for providing the WOMBAT software package and Mehdi Sargolzaei for providing the CFC software. We also appreciate Prof. Richard Osei Amponsah for his careful proof reading and editing the manuscript. The editor and anonymous reviewers are acknowledged for their helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the paper.