Global Veterinary Summit

Biography

Biography: Olufunmilayo A. Adebambo

Abstract

The Indigenous chicken strains of Nigeria are of small body size, laying few and small sized eggs but are relatively rugged, adapted and tolerant of several endemic local diseases yet surviving as scavengers.
Genetic characterization of the strains started in 1994, while molecular characterization started in 2004. Using 15 microsatellite markers, we studied the mean number of MS alleles per population in 3 populations from 3 regions of the country. A range of 5.27±0.51 alleles for NW to 6.20±0.66 for SW chickens, while effective number of allele contributing to the population ranged from 2.10±0.17 for NE to 2.82±0.24 for SW chickens with observed heterozygosity from 0.40±0.06 to 0.53±0.05 for NE and SW chickens. To assess genetic diversity of the birds, blood samples were analysed from the four strains for protein resolution using SDS–PAGE. The dendrogram developed revealed that the strains were clearly separated from one another with mean genetic similarity of 55%, the naked neck strain being the most divergent. The diversity was further determined in relation to other African and Asian chicken genotypes in a collaborative study using mitochondrial DNA markers to quantify maternal evolutionary trend in relation to World Clade distribution. in a diverse gene pool using high density (600k) SNP array. Our findings showed observed heterozygosity ranging from 0.3±0.04 (Ethiopia) to 0.36±0.04 (Pakistan). SNPs, deviation from HWE (p≤0.05) was least in Kenyan chicken (0.96%) and highest was in Ethiopian chicken (1.57%). Principal component analysis (PCA) showed modest separation of the 6 populations. Using first and second principal components (PC1 and PC2) 44.34% and 4.39% of the total variation could be explained, respectively, while admixture analysis and phylogenetic tree grouped the populations to 3 clusters. To make the indigenous chicken commercially viable and sustainable, marker assisted selection based on genome wide and Epi-genome wide SNP markers will be pursued to speed up improvement program for various qualitative and quantitative traits.