Current state and problems of poultry breeding in Russia (review)

Modern poultry breeding in Russia is one of the fastest growing sectors of agriculture, but the prosperity of the industry is almost entirely dependent on supplies of breeding material from abroad. Russia practically has no its own breeding basein both egg- and meat-type commercial crosses of chickens. Most of the domestic commercial crosses that had occupiedleading positions in Russian poultry breeding have been lost now. More than 90 % of commercial lines of breeding stocks in Russia are imported. Foreign poultry breeding companies merge into transnational holdings engaged in multi-speciesbreeding of farm animals, which allows them not to depend on market conditions in the industry. The reverse side of such aconsolidation on a global scale is a decrease in the genetic diversity of poultry and a high level of inbreeding in commercialchicken lines. In these circumstances, there is a real biological danger for the preservation of these lines due to the potentialsusceptibility of “monocultures” to new diseases, which can eliminate the genetically homogeneous population. Any selectionsystem is based on an assessment of the breeding value of potential parents. Its purpose is to obtain, as far as possible, themost accurate forecast of the genetic value of an individual and the productive qualities of its progeny. These requirementsare optimally met by the BLUP methodology, in which molecular genetics (SNP) data can be successfully integrated, whichallows supplementing the statistical analysis with genomic selection technologies. This is especially true for traits that cannotbe measured, or can only be measured in one sex, or only at the end of the productive period. The inclusion of genomic selection methods in breeding programs makes it possible significantly increase the selection efficiency for the main economicaltraits of chickens. The main task in the Russian breeding poultry industry is the creation of its own competitive breeding base,not inferior to Western commercial crosses in terms of productivity. To create poultry breeding centers and grandparents/parents-breeding farms the state support is needed. It is also necessary to develop and implement innovative methodsin the field of genomic selection, as well as software and information systems and specialized selection computer programs forprocessing and analyzing meta-data.