Inheritance of growth and production traits in Gramapriya male line chicken

Abstract

A comprehensive study was carried out in Gramapriya male line (PD-6) chicken with respect to growth, production and egg quality traits utilizing the data generated from 1995 chicks and 230 hens in S-8 generation at ICAR-Directorate of Poultry Research, Hyderabad, Telangana. Highly significant differences among hatches were observed for body weight, shank length, age at sexual maturity (ASM), egg production (EP), egg weight (EW) and egg mass (EM). The least squares mean of body weights (BW) at 2, 4, 6, 20 and 40 weeks of age were 187.03±0.97, 499.74±1.58, 838.67±5.69, 2074.93±9.82 and 2891.26±15.25 g, respectively. The least squares mean of shank lengths at 4 and 6 weeks of age were 70.19±0.09 and 87.48±0.12 mm respectively. The h2 for body weight and shank length at six weeks of age was 0.31±0.06 and 0.23±0.05, respectively, which were moderate to high in magnitude. The ASM was 168.94±0.71 days. The EP40 was 69.87±1.24 eggs with an egg weight of 55.11±0.22 g. The EM40 was 3840.02±67.52 g. The heritability estimate was low for EP40 (0.09±0.11). The gradual improvement in primary trait (SL6) in parent line will improve the performance in terminal cross ‘Gramapriya’ which ultimately benefits the farmers.