Vocalization Characters and Forkhead Box P2 (FoxP2) Polymorphism in Indonesian Crowing-Type Chicken (<i>Gallus gallus domesticus</i>)

Abstract

Crowing-type chicken is one of the important chicken breeds in Indonesia. This study was conducted to investigate the crowing characters of Pelung chicken and the effect of exon 7 <em>FoxP2</em> gene polymorphism in mute chicken. Chicken were obtained from local breeder. Pelung chicken crowing and morphology characterizations were conducted in Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia. Chicken breeding (♀ broiler×♂ Pelung and ♀ Pelung×♂ F₁), DNA extraction and <em>FoxP2</em> gene amplification were conducted at the Faculty of Biology, Gadjah Mada University. Results showed that the crowing duration was approximately 8.435 ± 1.647 s, consisting of 1.104 ± 0.210 s first syllable, 5.532 ± 1.274 s second syllable, and 1.858 ± 0.969 s third syllable. Cross-breeding between Pelung and broiler chicken resulted in chicken progeny all of which were of non-crowing-type. Our breeding results indicated that long crowing traits followed recessive autosomal inheritance. Sanger sequencing revealed an identical exon 7 sequence in mute and normal crowing-type chicken. Therefore, crowing is an important character for determining chicken breed purity, and our bioacoustic analysis was applicable in chicken show.