1Department of Animal and Fish Production, College of Agricultural and Food Sciences, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, 31982, Saudi Arabia
2Department of Poultry Production, Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University, P.O. Box 68 Hadayek Shoubra, 11241, Cairo, Egypt
*Corresponding Author: G.N. Rayan, Department of Animal and Fish Production, College of Agricultural and Food Sciences, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, 31982, Saudi Arabia, Email: gahmed@kfu.edu.sa
Online published on 21 January, 2026.
Growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) play a critical role in animal growth rates. We aimed to investigate the effect of GH and IGF-I genotypes on body weight (BW), dominanceand gene expression in slow-growing chickens at different ages. Where selection molecular marker has a tool in the acceleration of the genetic response of desired traits to improve production performance in chickens.
In this experiment, it was used the crossbred from commercial parent broiler (Arbor acres) with two local breeds were used to study the association among chicken growth hormones (cGH) and the insulin-like growth factor (IGF-I) genes for growth, with the aim of developing the local breed in terms of weight at marketing age. Two hundred chicks of local breeds were used in the restriction fragment length polymorphism and polymerase chain reaction techniques.
Based on the results of this study, there was a substantial correlation between the GH gene and body weight at nine weeks. In both crossbreds, there were noteworthy correlations between body weight and the polymorphism of the IGF-I gene. Thus, GH gene and IGF-I may be used as a candidate gene, to improve growth traits of crossbred.
Broilers breeder, Crossbred, GH, IGF-I genes, Local breeds, Marker-assisted selection
