Successful Identification of Duck Genome Region Determining Desirable Uniformity of Meat Performance Traits

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify genome regions determining duck meat performance traits with possible small variation. In total, 368 crossbred ducks of F2 generation obtained from two parental lines: Pekin-type ducks of Polish origin (A55) and Pekin-type ducks of French origin (GL-30) were recorded. The following seven traits were analyzed: body weight, breast muscle weight, leg muscle weight, water holding capacity in the breast and leg muscles, and color lightness L* of the breast and leg muscles. All birds (including parental and F1 generations) were genotyped (29 microsatellite markers). Means and coefficients of variation (CV) were calculated for 28 full-sibs (four sires by six dams and one sire by four dams). Number of progeny per fullsib group ranged from 7 to 17. The multivariate cluster analysis using grouping by k-means algorithm was used on transformed data. The multivariate cluster analysis gave two clusters: first group with 10 fullsibs and second one with 18 families. Differences among half-sibs in the CV of the recorded traits were determined. It should be noted that one out of five sire groups showed statistically significant differences from the other ones. Moreover, the CVs in this group were smaller. The analysis of microsatellite markers indicated three alleles from three loci were present only in the "superior" sire group. The obtained results indicate a promising opportunity of effective selection for improving carcass technological quality using molecular markers.

Interactions Between Non-Allelic Loci and Their Effects on Categorized Meat Performance Traits in Ducks

“…The present study is a continuation of earlier work by Mucha et al (2014), Moliński et al (2015) and Dobek et al (2017) with the same experimental material, based on a crossbreeding experiment. Today, studies on interlocus interactions are possible due to the advantages of statistical tools, such as the theory of information.…”

“…This may emphasize even more the role of the locus. Incidentally, the marker CAUD029 was indicated as being associated with the uniformity of basic performance traits in the analyzed population (Dobek et al, 2017). It should be noted that some other studied loci have also been indicated as important.…”

“…Unfortunately, in contrast to chicken and livestock mammals, the duck (Anas platyrhynchos) genome is still insufficiently known. There are several papers on the detection of genome regions determining important performance traits (Huang et al, 2006(Huang et al, , 2007aMaak et al, 2003;Mucha et al, 2014;Dobek et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2018). Huang et al (2006) developed a genetic linkage map for the duck.…”