Genetic distinctness of African, Asian and South American local chickens.

The genetic variability of various local chicken populations derived from Bolivia, India, Nigeria and Tanzania was evaluated with 22 microsatellites. Between two and 11 alleles per locus were detected. All populations showed high levels of heterozygosity with the lowest value of 45% for the population named Aseel from India and the highest value of 67% for Arusha from Tanzania.

Evaluation of oligonucleotide probes for simple tandem repeats (STR) to produce informative DNA fingerprints of the chicken.

1. DNA fingerprints of chickens from 2 commercial lines were used to identify oligonucleotide probes providing informative DNA fingerprints. 2.

Evaluation of genetic variation within and between different chicken lines by DNA fingerprinting.

A DNA fingerprinting technique was used to assess the extent of genetic variation within and between 12 lines of chickens of different origin. DNA fingerprints were obtained with the restriction endonucleases AluI and HinfI and with the oligonucleotide probes (CA)8, (CAC)5, (GGAT)4, and (GACA)4. Different methods that are based on band sharing and band frequency were tested to estimate genetic variation within and between populations.

Assessment of parental genomic proportions in crossbred chickens by DNA fingerprints.

Starting with the second crossbred generation, parental genomic-proportion lines in individuals deviate considerably from expectation. These individual variations offer the potential to increase the efficiency of crossbreeding programmes. DNA fingerprinting was established as an approach, to quantify the genomic contribution of the parental lines in individuals of two crossbred generations.