Study extra about Aviagen Group’s sustainability traits & environmental sustainability
9 September 2024
3 minute learn
Editor’s be aware: This text is an excerpt from the Aviagen Group’s A long time of Breeding for Welfare & Sustainability Report and extra articles will comply with. The Report is designed to exhibit Aviagen’s dedication to genetic enchancment of welfare and sustainability of broiler and turkey breeds. Plus, it covers far more like strategies to make sure robustness and new strategies to enhance choice and genetic progress. To learn or obtain the entire report, click on right here.
Welfare and Sustainability Traits
Aviagen has a protracted historical past of incorporating welfare and sustainability measurements into its breeding program to drive progress (Determine 4).
The enlargement to incorporate turkey breeding applications has allowed sharing of sources and alternate of recent concepts and strategies between the breeding applications.
Environmental Sustainability
Environmental sustainability has lengthy been a core focus for Aviagen. While rising flock outputs by means of enhancements in traits related to weight, livability, egg and meat yield play a key position on this, the quantity of feed a chicken requires to develop and develop is vital to the worldwide footprint of poultry manufacturing. FCR is the one most vital trait for decreasing the environmental impression of poultry manufacturing (Jones, 2008).
The development seen in FCR inside each broilers and turkeys has vastly decreased the carbon footprint of poultry meat and likewise decreased the quantity of environmental pollution related to poultry manufacturing.
Determine 5a exhibits Aviagen calculations of the relative environmental impression of broiler manufacturing over time. Broiler genetics from 1972 had a 50% greater environmental impression than 2020 genetics and future genetics could have 10% decrease carbon footprint by 2030 than the chicken immediately, which is in keeping with the estimations made by Jones (2008).
Turkey genetics resulted in a 20% decrease carbon footprint between 1977 and 2020, with an anticipated 10% enchancment by 2030 due to enhancements made within the breeding program (Determine 5b). These enhancements of about 1% per 12 months are primarily pushed by genetic enchancment of FCR.
For many years, intensive choice for improved FCR has resulted in a extremely feed environment friendly animal that’s much more sustainable than many various meat sources.
This may be seen within the evolution of the efficiency goals revealed for the BUT6 and Ross® 308 (Determine 6).
Traditionally FCR was assessed by measuring feed consumption and weight of birds in particular person pens. Since 2004 in broilers and 2006 in turkeys, Aviagen has pioneered the usage of feed stations, which file particular person chicken feed consumption utilizing transponder identification inside a bunch setting (Determine 7).
This permits the collection of birds with genes related to improved feed effectivity whereas the birds are free to precise pure conduct. The feed station know-how has been extremely profitable and instance of its significance may be seen within the 50% enhance in testing capability within the turkey breeding applications since 2018.
The feeding stations have additionally allowed the examine of feeding conduct, which has proven that broilers and turkeys share the identical construction of short-term feeding conduct, which is regulated by ranges of satiety. This was additionally noticed when evaluating broilers, turkeys and geese to cattle, pigs, dolphins and rats (Howie et al., 2010, Tolkamp et al., 2011). The correlations between feeding and consuming conduct traits with efficiency traits is low. There’s a variety of feed and consuming conduct methods within the broiler and turkey populations, which is vital for his or her adaptability to a variety of environments and manufacturing methods. Particular person chicken FCR alongside livability, robustness and weight have collectively contributed to the numerous enhancements seen in flock FCR.Â
Since 2014 in broiler and 2017 in turkeys, Aviagen has been making use of genomic choice in its breeding applications. Genomic choice will increase choice accuracy which ends up in better charges of progress throughout traits. This has been significantly useful for FCR the place it’s not attainable to measure the FCR of each particular person and the choice accuracy of unmeasured birds is markedly improved thereby enhancing progress within the environmental sustainability of poultry manufacturing.
