Research progress of feather color loci in Gallus gallus domestica

Feather color of Gallus gallus domestica is regulated by polygene. More and more genes and mutations related with the feather color have been located, including extended site locus, dark brown locus, spotted locus, genes related with horizontal plaque phenotypes, eumelanin dilution locus and so on. In view of the formation mechanism of the feather color, phenotypes corresponding to feather color loci, encoding genes and mutations corresponding to loci were reviewed. In addition, the paper also introduced how to eliminate the unfavorable feather color loci during the breeding process of quality chickens by molecular methods.