Groupe Grimaud Chooses Affymetrix Genotyping Arrays for Poultry Breeding Business

Affymetrix, Inc. has announced that one of the world’s largest producers of breeding chickens – Roussay, France-based Groupe Grimaud – will use the Axiom^® genotyping platform from Affymetrix in its genomic selection and poultry breeding program.

The Grimaud Novogen and Hubbard divisions will be incorporating the Affymetrix technology, and the company is already using a rabbit genotyping array from Affymetrix. Array manufacturing consistency with no SNP dropout or batch-to-batch variation, along with Affymetrix’ expert customization capabilities, were cited as factors influencing the purchase decision.

Affymetrix will develop multiple custom chicken genotyping microarrays in 96- and 384-array formats for the Axiom 384HT platform. Grimaud will also use the expert design arrays in Affymetrix’ portfolio. The catalog and custom genotyping arrays for poultry will enable Groupe Grimaud to select chickens for desired traits and also help identify candidates from pure-bred lines to move forward into production.

“Groupe Grimaud is committed to sustainable agriculture and meeting our customers’ needs through genetic technologies that improve the performance and quality of our products while keeping the diversity of the gene pool in our poultry breeding program,” said Olivier Demeure, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Groupe Grimaud. “The genotyping tools provided by Affymetrix and the genomic selection techniques in our poultry breeding program will be used to accelerate selection of genetic production traits and to improve our products for traits such as robustness. Through the Groupe Grimaud multi-species portfolio, the same developments will also be applicable to other products such as pig (Choice Genetics Division), rabbit (Hypharm Division), and duck (Grimaud Frères Sélection Division).”

“This large-scale industrial use of Axiom genotyping arrays validates yet again the potential of the platform and Affymetrix’ commitment to help strengthen the worldwide food supply,” said Laurent Bellon, Ph.D., senior vice president and general manager, Genotyping Business Unit at Affymetrix. "The Axiom 384HT platform is the leading solution for genomic selection in poultry and we are very happy to have Groupe Grimaud tap into Affymetrix’ expertise in designing custom genotyping arrays for avian genomes and use this platform for their genetic selection program.”

Agricultural genotyping solutions from Affymetrix offer animal genotyping customers customized, cost-effective, and automated genotyping tools for the highly accurate identification, validation, and screening of genetic markers associated with desired genetic traits. Affymetrix is the leader in customization of agriculture genotyping arrays and also offers catalog arrays for a variety of plants and animals that were designed under the Expert Design Program.