FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - In the first scientific report of its kind, researchers in Arkansas showed that chickens bred for water conservation continued to put on weight despite heat stress that would normally slow growth.Research by the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station indicates the specially bred line of chickens developed by Sara Orlowski could save growers thousands of gallons of water and thousands of pounds of food each month without sacrificing poultry health. Orlowski is an associate professor of poultry science with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.Commercial poultry is a multimillion dollar industry in Cleve-land County.As global population increases and usable water diminishes due to climate change patterns, scientists with the Division of Agriculture are looking for ways to raise the world's most popular meat protein using fewer resources.The study, which was part of a five-year project funded by a $9.95 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, showed a broiler chicken's physiology could be significantly improved to convert food and water to body weight even with three weeks of heat stress.Results from the study were published in Physiological Reports, the American Physiological Society's scientific journal, as an article titled "Effect of heat stress on the hypothalamic expression profile of water homeostasis-associated genes in low- and high-water efficient chicken lines." The grant was awarded through NIFA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.Sami Dridi, professor of poultry science specializing in avian endocrinology and molecular genetics, was responsible for conducting the experiment and the driving force in writing the paper.Walter Bottje, professor of poultry science for the experiment station, is the project director for the USDA Sustainable Agriculture Systems multi-institutional grant led by the Cente...
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