Evaluation of morphological traits in Aseel and Kadaknath breeds under backyard poultry farming using principal component analysis

Authors: MANOJ KUMAR, SATPAL DAHIYA, POONAM RATWAN, NANCY SHEORAN

Abstract: Aseel and Kadaknath chickens are recognized for their hardiness and adaptability to warm and humid climates and are being used for genetic improvement of different breeds which are appropriate for backyard poultry farming in India. In the present study, an attempt was made for the first time in India to assess the relationship among morphological traits and to explain the body conformation of Aseel and Kadaknath breeds under backyard poultry farming using principal component analysis (PCA). Eleven different morphological traits viz., 24-week body weight, comb length, keel length, body length, back length, breast girth, breast angle, radius-ulna length, shank length, shank circumference, and tail length were measured in both breeds. In both breeds, the correlations between all morphological characteristics were found to be positive and significant (p < 0.01) and varied from 0.245 (tail length and breast girth) to 0.797 (shank circumference and shank length) in Aseel and 0.247 (shank length and 24-week body weight) to 0.768 (back length and body length) in Kadaknath. All morphological traits had a high correlation with 24-week body weight in both chicken breeds suggesting the probable use of morphometric traits in predicting body weight. The extracted two components accounted for 64.822% and 68.286% of the total variability present in the original traits in Aseel and Kadaknath, respectively. It was concluded that PCA is an interesting tool for evaluation and effective to reduce the number of variables required to explain the body conformation in Aseel and Kadaknath breeds.

Keywords: Body weight, body conformation, back length, phenotypic correlation, shank length

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