Quantitative Morphological Traits as a measure of genetic diversity in two indigenous chicken ecotypes in Ethiopia

Abstract Text:  Phenotypic characterization of indigenous chicken ecotypes managed under scavenging system in two districts of Ethiopia was studied. A total of 448 indigenous chickens of both sexes were selected randomly to describe quantitative morphological traits. Generalized Linear Model procedures and multivariate statistics were used to analyze the data. Long legs, large combs and wattle could be indicative of better heat dissipation of birds in tropical hot environment. Discriminant analysis identified shank length, body length, comb width, body weight, wingspan and comb height to have more discriminating power causing morphological variation between chicken ecotypes. The correlation between the first canonical variable and the two chicken ecotypes is moderate (0.55). Hundred nineteen chickens (86.2%) that belonged to Horro ecotype were correctly classified with 13.8% rate of error while 123 chickens (80.4%) that belonged to Jarso ecotype were correctly classified leaving 19.6% error rate.

Keywords:

indigenous chicken

quantitative morphological traits.