Genetic parameters for traits of feed efficiency and fat deposition in broilers

• Grant number: 14/14917-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2014
• End date: September 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Animal Husbandry - Genetics and Improvement of Domestic Animals
• Principal Investigator: Danísio Prado Munari
• Grantee: Maisa da Costa Nakagawa
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias e Veterinárias (FCAV). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Jaboticabal. Jaboticabal , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The aviculture is redirecting its production towards more specific activities, such as the definition of meat cuts for processed food which offer increases most in the global market. In the poultry production sector, genetic improvement has been providing more productive poultry lineages. In order to optimize the brood's lineage improvement processes, new selection criteria are determined to reduce the proportion of fat in the carcass, found at the skin and abdomen. In this work, a database belonging to the Embrapa Swine and Poultry's Genetic Improvement system, with 1454 individuals belonging to the same broiler chicken lineage (TT), will be analyzed. The objectives will be to estimate the genetic parameters for the characteristics regarding residual feed intake and food efficiency, weight of all skin and separated by thighs, drumsticks, chest and abdominal fat and its respective gains: total skin, thigh skin, drumstick skin, chest skin and abdominal fat. The genetic, residual and phenotypic (co)variance components, used to attain the heritability estimates and genetic and environmental correlations, will be esteemed through Restrict Maximum Likelihood Method, under the animal model that will include the group settled effects (sex and incubation) and the additive and residual random genetic effects at 35 (residual feed intake and efficiency) and 42 (skin weight and abdominal fat) days of age, in multitrait analysis.