Investigation of the Guinea fowl and domestic fowl hybrids as potential surrogate hosts for avian cryopreservation programmes
A paper produced in the frame of the H2020 project 677353 'Innovative Management of Animal GEnetic resources' The aim of the present study was to investigate an infertile interspecific hybrid (Guinea fowl × chicken) as an appropriate host for primordial germ cells from native poultry breeds. The phenotype, the hatching time, the hatching rate, the sex ratio, the presence of own germ cells, the fertility and the phenotype of viable hybrids and the incidence of chromosomal abnormalities of dead hybrid embryos were described. The results showed shows that the sterility of hybrids can be used in gene conservation to be a universal host for PGCs of different avian species. ; This work also received funding from the VEKOP-2.3.2-16-2016-00012 and the EFOP-3.6.3-VEKOP-16-2017-00008 grant, co-financed by the European Union and the European Social Fund.