Genome-wide association study reveals the genetic mechanism of wing bone strength in Cornish White

Broiler products mainly refer to breast and leg meat, and also include wings. The price of wings is relatively high, about twice that of breast and leg meat. However, in this study, the incidence of wing bone deformity reaches more than 10 %. Such a high fracture rate reduces the quality and benefits of wing products. It is necessary to study the wing bones, find the relevant gene loci and enhance the strength of wing bones. A total of 436 Cornish White chickens were used as experimental birds. The weight, length, width, strength and toughness of ulna, radius, humerus and tibia, as well as growth and breast muscle traits, were measured, and correlation analysis was performed. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) was performed and a linear mixed model was used to analyze 39,000 SNPs from a self-developed broiler microarray. The genetic parameters of the traits were calculated. The results showed that the coefficient of variation of the toughness of the wing bone was greater than 20 %, and that of the ulna was 34.45 %. Wing bone traits were negatively correlated with feed conversion ratio and positively correlated with tibia traits and growth traits, reaching 0.8, and weakly correlated with breast muscle traits (P > 0.05). The heritability of wing bone traits was low, and the heritability of humerus strength was the highest (0.27). There were 27 significant SNP in the GWAS results, with the lowest P value being 2.263 × 10^-7. Eight bone-related genes, represented by nucleotide binding oligomerization domain containing 1, were annotated and enriched in the guanine nucleotide exchange factor activity pathway, which may affect bone strength by regulating bone homeostasis through FERM, ARH/RhoGEF and pleckstrin domain proteins. The research lays the foundation for further improving broiler product quality and animal welfare.