Study Of Blood Protein Polymorphism And External Characters Of Native Chickens In Iran

Enzymatic and nonenzymatic protein polymorphisms of blood plasma and erythrocyte and morphological characters of Iranian indigenous chickens; Garden Lokht, Marandy, Lary, Omumy and New Hampshire were analyzed. Garden Lokht is a naked neck chicken possessing higher ability of egg and meat production. Lary is a fighting type chicken, whereas Marandy possessing two strains (Black and White) is almost egg type. Omumy is nondescript type of native chickens that be find all over the country. Chickens were randomly chosen from the ones of which are rearing in the poultry Department of Iranian Animal Scinces Reseach Institute. The recorded external characters were the comb shape (the P and R loci), feather color (the B, E, I and S loci) and shank color (the Id locus) and earlobe color. To investigate the genetic variation, 11 loci(Akp, Akp-2, Amy-1, Es-1, Es-8, Es-D, Alb, Hb-1, Pas, pa-1 and Tf) controlling of 6 kinds of blood proteins were examined by starch or polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Phenotype and gene frequencies were estimated at these 11 proteins and 7 external characters loci and were compared among different groups too. Out of 18 loci, polymorphisms were found at 17 loci in all populations. . Alb locus showed monomorphism. Es-D was first appeared as polymorphism in the White Marandy. In Akp system, S band was too higer than F band. Gardan Lokht possessing 9.2% of F band showed lowest level . Lary, New Hampshire and Wihte Marandy were the only groups that showed 1,2 and 9 (+) bands, respectively. In respect of Amy-1, CC phenotype was not observed. The frequencies of BB and AB were higher in all populations, whereas AC and AA frequencies were observed in lower level in Gardan Lokht, Lary and Marandy only. In respect of Es-1 all groups showed higher level of BB type. Phenotype variations were higher in White Marandy rather than other groups. BB phenotype of Es-8 was appeared in all populations, whereas AA phenotype was only observed in White Marandy in lower level. Omumy, Garden Lokht and New Hampshire showed only AA Phenotype of Pas protein, whereas the other groups having aa phenotype in lower frequency. In respect of Pa-1, AA was higher in different groups and BB was observed lower frequency in White Marandy. Tf BB was predominant in Iranian chickens and New Hampshire. Phenotypes AA and BB were observed with less numbers in Gardan Lokht. Two strains of Marandy showed lower Tf BC. In respect of Hb-1, AB phenotype was observed in higher frequency, whereas AA was never observed and BB appeared in lower frequency. Es-8B, Es-1B and akp frequencies were higher in all examined groups. Whereas in the Akp-2, Es-1 and Es-8 loci and almost in Amy-1 locus, frequency differences were high in some groups, Hb-1 locus frequency difference was too low. Some chicken populations were fixed in Akp-2o, PasA and TfB alleles. Lary and Gardan Lokht populations showed higher frequency of Es-1A and Akp alleles, whereas the Amy-1C frequency was low in all ones. White Marandy and Lary were the only groups that showed the fourth allele of Es-1 (Es-1o). Most of chickens had the single comb, except Omumy in which small number of rose and pea ones were found. Allele B was only seen in Omumy with a frequency of 0.1366. Allele S was found in Omumy and Gardan Lokht. The frequency of Id allele was relatively high. The number of earlobe red color chicken was higher than earlob white color one. From these results it was concluded that external characters variations and protein polymorphisms were relatively high in the examined populations and in general, Iranian native chickens similar to those of Asian native ones might not have originally contained the B, E, I and S genes. Therefore such kind of genes seemed to be brought by western improved breeds.