Current state and problems of poultry breeding in Russia (review)

Abstract

Modern poultry breeding in Russia is one of the fastest growing sectors of agriculture, but the prosperity of the industry is almost entirely dependent on supplies of breeding material from abroad. Russia practically has no its own breeding base in both egg- and meat-type commercial crosses of chickens. Most of the domestic commercial crosses that had occupied leading positions in Russian poultry breeding have been lost now. More than 90 % of commercial lines of breeding stocks in Russia are imported. Foreign poultry breeding companies merge into transnational holdings engaged in multi-species breeding of farm animals, which allows them not to depend on market conditions in the industry. The reverse side of such a consolidation on a global scale is a decrease in the genetic diversity of poultry and a high level of inbreeding in commercial chicken lines. In these circumstances, there is a real biological danger for the preservation of these lines due to the potential susceptibility of “monocultures” to new diseases, which can eliminate the genetically homogeneous population. Any selection system is based on an assessment of the breeding value of potential parents. Its purpose is to obtain, as far as possible, the most accurate forecast of the genetic value of an individual and the productive qualities of its progeny. These requirements are optimally met by the BLUP methodology, in which molecular genetics (SNP) data can be successfully integrated, which allows supplementing the statistical analysis with genomic selection technologies. This is especially true for traits that cannot be measured, or can only be measured in one sex, or only at the end of the productive period. The inclusion of genomic selection methods in breeding programs makes it possible significantly increase the selection efficiency for the main economical traits of chickens. The main task in the Russian breeding poultry industry is the creation of its own competitive breeding base, not inferior to Western commercial crosses in terms of productivity. To create poultry breeding centers and grandparents/parents-breeding farms the state support is needed. It is also necessary to develop and implement innovative methods in the field of genomic selection, as well as software and information systems and specialized selection computer programs for processing and analyzing meta-data.

Keywords

• chicken crosses
• selection in poultry breeding
• breeding center
• grandparent stock
• parent stock
• blup
• snp
• genomic selection