There have been significant evolutionary pressures on the chicken during both its speciation and its subsequent domestication by man. Infectious diseases are expected to have exerted strong selective pressures during these processes. Consequently, it is likely that genes associated with disease susceptibility or resistance have been subject to some form of selection. Two genes involved in the immune response (interferon-gamma and interleukin 1-beta) were selected for sequencing in diverse chicken populations from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kenya, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Botswana, as well as six outgroup samples (grey, green, red and Ceylon jungle fowl and grey francolin and bamboo partridge). Haplotype frequencies, tests of neutrality, summary statistics, coalescent simulations and phylogenetic analysis by maximum likelihood were used to determine the population genetic characteristics of the genes. Networks indicate that these chicken genes are most closely related to the red jungle fowl. Interferon-gamma had lower diversity and considerable coding sequence conservation, which is consistent with its function as a key inflammatory cytokine of the immune response. In contrast, the pleiotropic cytokine interleukin 1-beta had higher diversity and showed signals of balancing selection moderated by recombination, yielding high numbers of diverse alleles, possibly reflecting broader functionality and potential roles in more diseases in different environments.

Abstract:The study was conducted to investigate reproductive potentialities, meat yield and egg quality characteristics of indigenous dwarf chicken (IDC) of Bangladesh under intensive management condition. The experiment was conducted at BAU Poultry farm for a period of 26 months from March 2013 to April 2015.A total of 499 eggs were incubated to examine hatching performance, 64 eggs were used to determine egg quality characteristics and 33 birds of 24 weeks age were slaughtered to investigate meat yield characteristics. The mean of hatching egg weight and IDC chick weight were 39.81g and 26.68g, respectively. Estimated chick weight was 67.19% of the egg weight. The average mature body weight and age at sexual maturity of IDC was 1093.20 g and 166.53 d, respectively. The average hen day egg production of IDC up to 32 and 75 weeks of age was 55.22 and 37.43%, respectively. The estimated fertility and hatchability of IDC eggs were 78.36 and 71.80%. Among the meat yield parameters considered, dressed weight, breast weight and thigh meat weight varied significantly (P<0.05) between the males from IDC and the chicken with normal size shank (CNS). IDC also differed significantly (P<0.01) from CNS in terms of neck length (P<0.01) and drumstick bone length. Egg quality parameters like egg weight, shape index, yolk diameter and egg breaking strength varied significantly (P<0.05) between IDC and CNS. In addition, eggs of IDC and CNS showed significant (P<0.01) variation in dry albumen weight and albumen dry matter percent. In conclusion, the findings of the present study provided with some basic information about the potentialities of IDC which could be utilized in future breeding program.

The present study was carried out with retrospective data collected from the nucleus herd of USDA funded Red Chittagong Cattle (RCC) project at Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) and community herd at Char Jailkhana, Mymensingh during 2005 to 2011. The 15 days test interval daily milk yield records of 141 lactations taken from 52 cows from two different herds were collected to estimate multiplicative ratio factors (RF), simple regression from last test day milk yield record (SRLTD) and last test day along with average daily milk yield from known lactation part at any duration (SRLTAD) for prediction of standard 300 days milk yield. The correlations among 300 day milk yields estimated by three different extension models were also investigated and were found no statistically significant differences (P>0.05) with significantly (P<0.01) highly correlated with each other. The results revealed the accuracy of prediction of ratio factors and regression coefficients for three different models and may be adopted any of those models to extend standardized milk production (300 day) for RCC in Bangladesh. Asian Australas. J. Biosci. Biotechnol. 2019, 4 (1), 67-73