title: Egg shell quality in Japanese quail: characteristics, heritabilities and genetic and phenotypic relationships.
abstract: The objective of the present study was to estimate heritabilities as well as genetic and phenotypic correlations for egg weight, specific gravity, shape index, shell ratio, egg shell strength, egg length, egg width and shell weight in Japanese quail eggs. External egg quality traits were measured on 5864 eggs of 934 female quails from a dam line selected for two generations. Within the Bayesian framework, using Gibbs Sampling algorithm, a multivariate animal model was applied to estimate heritabilities and genetic correlations for external egg quality traits. The heritability estimates for external egg quality traits were moderate to high and ranged from 0.29 to 0.81. The heritability estimates for egg and shell weight of 0.81 and 0.76 were fairly high. The genetic and phenotypic correlations between egg shell strength with specific gravity, shell ratio and shell weight ranging from 0.55 to 0.79 were relatively high. It can be concluded that it is possible to determine egg shell quality using the egg specific gravity values utilizing its high heritability and fairly high positive correlation with most of the egg shell quality traits. As a result, egg specific gravity may be the choice of selection criterion rather than other external egg traits for genetic improvement of egg shell quality in Japanese quails.
authors: 1Department of Genetics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine,Namik Kemal University,Tekirdag 59100,Turkey.
authors: D
authors: D
authors: Narinc
authors: 2Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture,Selcuk University,Konya 42075,Turkey.
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Aygun
authors: 3Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture,Akdeniz University,Antalya 07100,Turkey.
authors: E
authors: E
authors: Karaman
authors: 3Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture,Akdeniz University,Antalya 07100,Turkey.
authors: T
authors: T
authors: Aksoy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D003370:Coturnix / Q000235:genetics*; D004528:Egg Shell / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000254:growth & development*; D005260:Female; D009929:Organ Size; D010063:Ovum / Q000166:cytology*; D010641:Phenotype; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D013046:Specific Gravity
keywords: Bayesian; egg shell; heritability; quail; quality