Effect of a reciprocal cross between local and commercial chickens on hatchability and estimating some genetic parameters

Abstract

This study was carried out at Kani Graw field –around Erbil city during the breeding season 2021 by using two genetic groups of chickens, Kurdish local chickens (KK) and Super Harco commercial dual purpose chickens (HH), which were reciprocally mated to produce four combinations ( HH , KK ,HK and KH) to estimate crossbreeding effects, general combining ability (GCA) and specific combing ability (SCA), heterotic effect percent (H%), and direct additive effect (DAE) for hatching traits in pure chickens and their crosses. Furthermore, GCA and SCA were also used to estimate breeding value (BV) and genetic value (GVFM) for two parents and their crosses. The results indicated that significant differences among genetic groups in fertility percentage (F%) and chick weight (CW) however did not observe any significant differences in egg weight (EW) , hatchability of total eggs percentage (HTE%) and embryonic dead rate (ED%). However there were no significant difference between H×K cross and it's reciprocal K ×H in EW, HTE% , F% and ED% traits, furthermore, the reciprocal crosses(K×H) had recorded statistically the highest values for HTE%, F% and CW compared to the other genotypes, the KK genotype was recorded positive values of GCA for EW , HTE% , F% and ED% traits.. the reciprocal crosses (K × H ) was recorded the positive and high estimates of SCA for HTE % , F % and ED % traits while, H x K had the highest positive estimates for EW trait compared to the other genotypes. percentages of Heterotic (H %) for the H x K cross and K x H reciprocal were recorded positive values of HTE% ,F% and ED% traits were found. On the other hand both cross and reciprocal were negative value for CW . The KK genotype had significant and positive values of direct additive effect (DAE) for F% and ED % traits. Both of the HH and KK genotypes had negative value of DAE for CW trait, KK strain and H× K cross had the highest expected breeding values for HTE% and F % traits. both of HH , KK and H×K genotypes had the negative breeding values for EW and CW, while, K×H reciprocal had the highest values of HTE% , F% and ED % traits. In addition , genetic value of KS had the highest value in H% , F% and ED% .