Principal component analysis of growth traits in Aseel native chicken

Kumar, A., Kumar, S., Pandey, M., Vaishnav, S., Chauhan, A. and Chand, R. 2024. Principal component analysis of growth traits in Aseel native chicken. Indian Journal of Poultry Science, 59(3): 241–246. Aseel is a well-recognised native chicken breed, known for its endurance, fighting skills, majestic gait and higher tolerance for heat and stress conditions etc., and is being used for development of superior crosses for backyard poultry farming. This study investigated relationship between earlier body weights with the subsequent weights until the market age, i.e., 20-week. Records of chick weight (n=620) and weights at bi-weekly intervals (n= 1070) were analysed for Principal Component Analysis (PCA) using IBM-SPSS version 26. All the coefficients were significant (p=0.01) and positive, indicating that trait has good predictability, which could be useful in chalking out of selection and improvement programs. Low to moderate correlations were estimated between juvenile body weights with weight at marketable age (0.10-0.55) while the correlations were higher (0.63 - 0.95) thereafter. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sample adequacy and Bartlett’s test of sphericity and communality at different ages were also calculated, which revealed adequacy of samples for PCA. The selected two components collectively explain the 79.46% of total variability present in the dataset. The first component explained 66.51% variability while the second component accounts for 12.94% variability. It was concluded that PCA is an excellent tool for reducing the recording of number of traits or dimension of the original data. Further, the extracted principal components were useful in prediction of body weight at market age in Aseel native chicken.