Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM)

Domestication is the process by which animals become adapted to the environment provided by humans. The process of domestication involves a number of changes in the living environment as well as selection pressure of animals. These changed environmental factors and selection pressures have produced a number of correlated behavioural, morphological and physiological changes among different species. The phenotype that altered during domestication, differs from its wild progenitors and seen among many domesticated breeds is referred as “domestic phenotype”. For example, alteration of plumage colour in the chicken.

In general, it is believed that chickens were domesticated in South East Asia around 8000 years ago and Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) is the common ancestor of all domestic chicken breeds (Gallus gallus domesticus). During the domestication of the chicken, selection for numerous different colour phenotypes has occurred, giving rise to a wealth of different coloured domestic breeds. 

In this study, an attempt was made to map the genetic architecture of plumage colour pigmentation.