Micro-genetic environmental sensitivity across macro-environments of chickens reared in Burkina Faso and France

BACKGROUND: Commercial poultry production systems follow a pyramidal structure with a nucleus of purebred animals under controlled conditions at the top and crossbred animals under commercial production conditions at the bottom. Genetic correlations between the same phenotypes on nucleus and production animals can therefore be influenced by differences both in purebred-crossbred genotypes and in genotype-by-environment interactions across the two environments, known as macro-genetic environmental sensitivity (GES). Within each environment, genotype-by-environment interactions can also occur due to so-called micro-GES. Micro-GES causes heritable variation in phenotypes and decreases uniformity. In this study, genetic variances of body weight (BW) and of micro-GES of BW and the impacts of purebred-crossbred differences and macro-environmental differences on micro-GES of BW were estimated. The dataset contained three subpopulations of slow-growing broiler chickens: purebred chickens (PB) reared in France, and crossbred chickens reared in France (FR) under the same conditions as PB or reared in Burkina Faso (BF) under local conditions. The crossbred chickens were offspring of the same dam line and had PB as their sire line. RESULTS: Estimates of heritability of BW and micro-GES of BW were 0.54 (SE of 0.02) and 0.06 (0.01), 0.67 (0.03) and 0.03 (0.01), and 0.68 (0.04) and 0.02 (0.01) for the BF, FR, and PB subpopulations, respectively. Estimates of the genetic correlations for BW between the three subpopulations were moderately positive (0.37 to 0.53) and those for micro-GES were weakly to moderately positive (0.01 to 0.44). CONCLUSIONS: The results show that the heritability of the micro-GES of BW varies with macro-environment, which indicates that responses to selection are expected to differ between macro-environments. The weak to moderate positive genetic correlations between subpopulations indicate that both macro-environmental differences and purebred-crossbred differences can cause re-ranking of sires based on their estimated breeding values for micro-GES of BW. Thus, the sire that produces the most variable progeny in one macro-environment may not be the one that produces the most variable offspring in another. Similarly, the sire that produces the most variable purebred progeny may not produce the most variable crossbred progeny. The results highlight the need for investigating micro-GES for all subpopulations included in the selection scheme, to ensure optimal genetic gain in all subpopulations. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12711-023-00854-7.