Conserving Maltese farm genetic resources : the Maltese black chicken

Abstract

The Maltese Black Chicken is a Mediterranean breed of poultry which used to be raised under backyard conditions since it produces large white eggs even under poor management. Nowadays, it has been replaced by commercial strains and heavy breeds of poultry, as Maltese farmers evolved from keeping chickens under backyard conditions to running fairly big, commercial farms. Scavenging and backyard poultry are no longer important to the local population and as a result, their numbers have considerably decreased. It would be of great loss to let this breed go into extinction, therefore the first DNA bank was created in order to preserve the genes of the present Maltese Black Chicken to ensure its survival. The DNA was extracted from blood samples of twenty individual chickens of the breed. This DNA bank can be used in the future if, unfortunately, the Maltese Black Breed population continues to decline in numbers, goes through continuous out breeding and diminishes completely.