A Novel Application of Genomic Information in a Duck Breeding Programme

"The global demand for high quality, sustainable animal protein continues to rise as the world's population increases. Poultry meat is now set to become the world's favourite meat source, both in developed and developing countries, providing an affordable, quality and safe source of animal protein and account for around 35% of all animal protein (FAO, 2017). Cherry Valley Farms (CVF) is a UK based market leading Pekin meat duck breeding company, exporting breeding stock all over the world. Although duck production is of smaller scale to the chicken in the UK and Europe, it forms a large proportion of poultry production and consumption in the rapidly expanding Chinese market. To enable the duck breeding industry in the UK to further enhance its ability to produce cost effective, sustainable and welfare friendly duck meat, we intend to introduce the use of genomic information into our routine breeding programme.

The introduction of genomic information to CVF serves two major purposes (i) to track parentage of the ducks used in our selection programme; and (ii) enable us to assess the effectiveness of genomic selection in our breeding programme. The implementation of parentage assignment will enable us to house multiple male and female birds together to allow the expression of natural behaviour, help us better maintain genetic diversity, improve the reproductive performance of flocks, thereby reducing the costs of day old ducks to our customers. The introduction of genomic selection aims to improve the accuracy of prediction of genetic merit, which in turn accelerates the genetic progress achieved to translate in faster gains in improving health, welfare, meat quality and the overall efficiency of production to reduce the environmental footprint of the industry. Genomic selection has been applied to many commercial animal species and research has demonstrated a significant impact on selection response in breeding programmes.

In order to ensure CVF is able to deliver this ambitious project to implement genomic information into its routine breeding programme we will partner with the Roslin Institute (RI). RI is the world's leading research centre in the application of genomics and quantitative genetics to farm animal breeding having an extensive track record working with industry. Together CVF and RI will develop and implement genomic information into CVF's successful breeding programme. The developments will have far reaching implications for CVF and, as a result of their market penetrance, through global duck supply chain as a whole."