%0 Journal Article
%T An Assessment of Genetic Diversity of Vietnamese H`mong Chickens
%A Ngo Thi Kim Cuc
%A F.C. Muchadeyi
%A H. Eding
%A S. Weigend
%J International Journal of Poultry Science
%D 2006
%I 
%X The objective of the study was to assess genetic diversity of H`mong chickens, a local breed in the mountainous areas of Northern Vietnam. Structured questionnaires were administered to fifty-five households from three villages (Phieng Cam (n = 30), Chieng Chan (n = 15) and Chieng Noi (n = 10). Morphological characters of 773 chickens were physically examined. Flock sizes averaged 14.44 ¡À 7.38 chickens per household. Seventy percent of the chickens had predominantly brown and multicoloured plumage. Yellow skin (94%) dominated over black skin colour. Ninety-five percent of the chickens had black legs. Ninety-six percent had black versus yellow beaks. Single comb prevailed with a frequency of 94%. Body weight of adult chickens averaged 1617g (¡À 52). Hens laid 12¨C13 eggs per clutch, with an average egg weight of 41 g. Hatching rate was more than 80%. The chickens were reared under a semi-scavenging production system in which 85% of the households provided chicken housing. All farmers supplemented their chickens with whole maize at most twice per day. A subset of thirty-six chickens from the three villages was genotyped at 29 microsatellite loci. A total of 186 alleles were observed. The mean number of alleles was 6.41 per locus. Heterozygosity varied from 62.7% to 66.8% for the three populations. All the village based populations were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and were not affected by inbreeding. Pair wise FST indicated a significant (P< 0.05) differentiation between the Chieng Chan and the other two populations. The Nei`s, Reynold`s and Cavalli-Sforza distance measures showed Chieng Chang to be more distant from the two geographically close populations. There was no significant (P>0.05) genetic differences among the plumage colour based populations. The highest number of identical structure runs (10 out of 100) were observed at K = 2 in which Phieng Cam and Chieng Noi chicken clustered as one population while the Chieng Chan population had some individuals partly assigned to the Phieng Cam and Chieng Noi cluster.
%K H¡¯mong chickens
%K production system
%K microsatellites
%K genetic diversity
%U http://docsdrive.com/pdfs/ansinet/ijps/2006/912-920.pdf