Global Warming photo
SHARE
Picture of a chicken.

Eggsellent

Picture of a chicken.

Rising global temperatures pose a major risk to world food supplies. When it comes to chickens, geneticist Carl Schmidt is working to prepare the most-dined-upon North American breeds to withstand greater heat stress in coming decades.

As Lauren Rothman reports for Modern Farmer, Schmidt and his University of Delaware team are collaborating with researchers from Iowa and North Carolina state universities to decode the DNA of chicken breeds in Brazil and Uganda that have featherless heads and necks.

These birds find baldness a virtue, not a curse, because the adaptation “allows the south-of-the-equator poultry to throw off additional body heat and stay cool in their scorching native climes,” writes Rothman.

They are generally found in small backyard flocks, Schmidt tells Rothman, rather than industrial agriculture complexes, and “are under constant selection pressure” to survive intense heat and other environmental challenges, traits he and others are eager to see introduced to North American breeds:

Once Schmidt and his colleagues have deciphered and analyzed the genetic codes of these hardy African and South American poultry, they hope American producers will crossbreed them to North American birds. It could take around 10 generations of chickens, carefully bred, to arrive at new heat-resistant breeds that can successfully reproduce on their own.

Poultry production is booming worldwide, as Rothman reports, with global food experts projecting that it will top 100 million tons in 2015, and 143 million tons by 2030. An interruption in this supply could cause a humanitarian disaster.

Click here to read the full article.