Determination of Residual Feed Intake and Its Associations with Single Nucleotide Polymorphism in Chickens

Marker assisted selection (MAS) for residual feed intake (RFI) is considered to be one of the powerful means to improve feed conversion efficiency, and therefore reduce production costs. To test the inner relationship among body compositions, growth traits and RFI, four models were proposed to assess the extensively explanatory variables accounting for partial variables in feed intake besides metabolic body weight and growth rate. As a result, the original model (Koch's model) had the lowest le (80.78%) and the highest Bayesian information criterion (1323.3) value among the four models. Moreover, the effects on RFI caused by single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were assessed in this study. Twelve SNPs from 7 candidate genes were genotyped in 2 Chinese native strains. rs14743490 of RPLP2 gene showed suggestively significant association with initial body weight in both strains (P<0.10). rs15047274 of TAF15 was significantly associated with growth weight, final weight, and feed intake (P<0.05) in N301 strain, in contrast, it was only suggestively significant associated with feed intake (P<0.10) in N414 strain. rs15869967 was significantly associated with RFI in N414 strain but not in N301 strain. This study has identified potential genetic markers suitable for MAS in improving the above mentioned traits, but these associations need to be rectified in other larger populations in future.