A Heritable Difference in the Resistance of Turkey Blastoderms to Prolonged Preincubation Storage—Cytological Evidence ,

Abstract

KOSIN and Arora (1966) have reported that following a period of extended storage, eggs from a Broad Breasted Bronze (B.B.B.) line selected for large body size at 24 weeks of age (line 2) produced, in the first three days of incubation, more dead and abnormal embryos than those from a B.B.B. line selected for high hatchability (line 4). Furthermore, the surviving normal embryos in the latter were consistently superior in their rate of early development. The purpose of the present paper is (a) to augment our earlier observations on the gross appearance of the affected blastoderms and (b) to report the results of a cytological study of the blastoderms, from the same two genetically isolated lines (cf. Kosin and Arora, 1966) subjected in-ovo, first, to extended preincubation storage and, then, to brief incubation. The latter treatment was introduced to test the capacity of cells in “aged” blastoderms to recuperate during .