Mithun (Bos frontalis) or gayal and Indian Bison or wild gaur (Bos gaurus) are listed among the rare and endangered bovine species of India. The remote location of mithun in four North Eastern Hill states (Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram), scattered population size, and non-availability of genetic diversity status are major limitations towards devising a suitable breeding and conservation policy of these species. Since several studies have demonstrated the successful applicability of microsatellite/SSR markers across related genera/families in both crop plants and animal species, 30 FAO recommended cattle microsatellites were utilized for the assessment of the genetic diversity of Indian mithun, bison, and local Tho-tho cattle. Mitochondrial transmembrane protein coding cytochrome B (CYTB) complete sequence data of 71 bovine samples from India were also used to reinforce the study. Population structuring clustered the all bovines into three subgroups as per geographical location and species. Bottleneck analysis indicated a mode shift in the allelic frequency distribution of gaur, indicating minor genetic bottleneck events in the past, while no bottleneck was found in mithun and Tho-tho cattle. To our knowledge, this study represents the first report of molecular genetic characterization showing the population structure and status of genetic diversity in rare Indian bovines, namely, Mithun, Gaur, and Tho-tho cattle.

Aseel, a popular breed of native chicken, characterized by its pugnacity, fighting strength and royal gait is being used to create crosses for domestic chicken production. However, information on its growth models is scanty. An experiment was conducted to evaluate different non-linear models and to find out best fitting model in Aseel, being maintained at Central Avian Research Institute, Izatnagar, Bareilly. Data on body weights from 12-weeks of age to 20-weeks of age at biweekly intervals were recorded on a random bred single-hatched flock. Owing to the non-linear characteristic of growth, three non-linear models namely, Gompertz, Bertalanffy and Logistic models were evaluated. Goodness of fit for all the models were checked using coefficient of determination (R2), adjusted coefficient of determination (Adj-R2), mean square error (MSE), mean absolute error (MAE) and Akaike information criterion (AIC). The Bertalanffy model most accurately characterized the growth trend in males, females and pooled sex data. The study revealed that this model may be used to ascertain the average body weights in Aseel chicken under random mating. The investigation has generated baseline data on growth modelling of random bred groups and may be used in similar investigations on other native chicken breeds.