Long-term divergent selection for 8-week body weight in chickens – a review of experiments

Abstract

In order to study the effects of long-term selection on genetic parameters, the effect of selection on selected and correlated traits and to develop lines for various physiological, biochemical and molecular genetic studies a comprehensive selection study for body weight in chickens has been conducted at the Biotechnical Faculty of University in Ljubljana. Long-term divergent selection in chickens for 8-week body weight for 31 generations produced a high weight (D+) and low weight (D–) line. Body weight at 8 weeks of age was the exclusive selection criterion. Selection lines were compared for body weight and for unselected traits including carcass traits, feed conversion, egg and meat quality traits, reproduction traits, muscle characteristics, nutritional and physiological traits. This paper describes the most important results of different experiments that were performed on animals from both lines in various generations of selection.

Keywords

• poultry
• chickens
• divergent selection
• growth
• correlated traits