Overview of performance and genetic parameters of economic traits in Indian native chicken breeds

SUMMARY

Native chickens are the backbone of backyard poultry farming in India. Native chicken production is a valuable asset for rural and tribal poor as it is a source of nutritional and livelihood security to them. Native chickens have minimal input requirements, are well adapted to hard scavenging environments, inadequate nutrition, parasite and disease obstacles, and have significant genetic variation for numerous traits, making them excellent genetic resources for current and subsequent generations. The performance and genetic parameters are evaluated to understand the inheritance patterns of several economically viable traits in native chickens in order to allow the development of appropriate breeding strategies for improved performance. The production levels of hens will rise as a result of breeding native hens for economic traits, which will also encourage traditional producers to use native hens. The estimation of performance and genetic characteristics pertaining to economic traits in chickens might be beneficial in comprehending and enhancing their genetic diversity. Furthermore, the development of any breeding programme requires an understanding of the performance and genetic characteristics of traits. Additionally, indirect selection for any of the significantly correlated traits has the potential to genetically improve other traits due to the pleiotropic effect of genes. The current review discusses the estimates of performance and genetic parameters like means, heritability and correlation coefficients for body weights, morphometric traits, production and reproduction traits, egg quality parameters and semen attributes of native chickens in India.

KEYWORDS:

• Native chickens
• economic traits
• means
• heritability
• correlation coefficients

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.