M K Padhi

Production benefits of the crossbreeding of indigenous and non-indigenous ducks - growing and laying period body weight and production performance.

To evaluate different crosses and purebreds ducks in respect to various economic traits and to estimate different crossbreeding genetic parameters, a 3 × 3 complete diallel cross involving indigenous duck (DD), Khaki Campbell (KK) and White Pekin (WW) were used to produce three purebreds (DD, KK, WW) three crossbreds (DK, DW, KW) and three reciprocals (KD, WD, WK). A total of 609 ducklings produced were reared on deep litter and the females (316 in number) were evaluated for growing and laying period body weight along with the production performance traits. Different crossbreeding genetic parameters were estimated for different traits. All the traits in respect to body weight gain during growing and laying period and different production traits including laying house mortality rate showed significant (p ≤ 0.05) difference between different genetic groups. In general, crossbreds perform better than the purebreds for most of the traits studied. General combining ability (GCA), specific combining ability (SCA) and reciprocal effect (RE) were significant (p ≤ 0.01) for body weight and production traits. Egg weight showed significant (p ≤ 0.01) difference in respect to GCA, SCA and RE for all the ages of measurement except RE for 30th week egg weight. Laying period mortality rate was only significant (p ≤ 0.05) for SCA. Most of the crossbreds recorded heterosis rate in desirable direction for majority of the traits. Overall results revealed that the crossbreds perform well in respect to different traits than the purebreds and may be used to take advantage of heterosis. DW performs well in respect to majority of the traits measured and is of importance for commercial exploitation. Further, pure line selection with development of specialised sire and dam line followed by crossing may be of importance to enhance the performances in the crosses.