Estimation of genomic heritability for growth traits in an F2 crosses of Arian broiler line and Azerbaijan indigenous chicken using 60K SNP Beadchip

Understanding the genetic control of growth traits is one of the most important breeding goals in poultry breeding. In order to estimate the genomic heritability of growth traits, we used Illumnia 60K chicken SNP Beadchip in a chicken F2 resource population derived from the reciprocal cross between Arian line and Azerbaijan indigenous chicken. The genomic heritability was estimated through genomic relationship matrix for body weights and Shank lengths at different ages 1,3,5,7 and 9 weeks. To investigate the relationship between allele frequency and genomic heritability estimated for BW7 explained by markers, SNPs were classified into five groups of MAF (0 – 0.1, 0.1 –0.2, 0.2– 0.3, 0.3–0.4 and 0.4–0.5). To estimate the genomic heritability, five models were fitted accounting for the similarity relationship matrix within each of the five MAF groups, respectively. The genomic heritability estimations ranged from 0.43 to 0.27 for bw1 and bw9, and from 0.46 to 0.12 for Shl1 and Shl9, respectively. The estimated genomic correlations between BW and ShL at different ages were moderately high. Estimated heritabilities were 0.15, 0.3, 0.17, 0.26 and 0.27 for each of the five MAF groups, respectively. Interestingly, heritability estimates revealed highest value for MAF group (0. 1 to 0. 2). Genomic heritability estimated here can contribute to a better understanding of the genetic control of growth traits in broiler chickens. In addition, using these findings can accelerate the genetic progress in the breeding programs.