Poultry breeders’ ability to harness new technologies could help give producers the edge as they look to stay ahead of multiple challenges. Michael Barker reports
The UK poultry industry has had to face up to many challenges in recent years, but it has one huge weapon in its arsenal to remain at the cutting edge of global supply, and that is its well-earned reputation for excellence in breeding and genetic development.
At a time when producers are looking for breeding improvements to bring disease resistance, production efficiency, meat quality, yield, reproductive fitness and welfare outcomes, that level of expertise is essential to the long-term success of the sector.
It’s no small task, but according to Aviagen, the UK is in a privileged position globally when it comes to poultry genetics, and the group itself has both chicken and turkey breeding programmes in this country. That effectively means that the UK is not only the keeper of key poultry genetics but also that it is at the top of the poultry genetics supply chain, providing breeding stock both locally and to a large number of countries around the world.
The comments for this article attributed to Aviagen were compiled by a range of colleagues across the company’s R&D, welfare and sustainability departments, and the group stresses that having poultry breeding programmes in the UK means that its research and development happens locally, leveraging the generation of science and technology and the implementation of cutting-edge breeding tools. Additionally, the Aviagen Group has established its global Genomics Centre in Scotland to handle the information from all of its breeding programmes across the globe.
The business has made a number of innovations within the R&D space, most notably the generation of digital phenotypes for a variety of applications ranging from monitoring bird behaviour to the assessment of welfare outcomes. “These, coupled with the fast development of AI implementations like machine learning and the use of tracking sensors, open a complete new dimension to what could be achieved through breeding,” Aviagen says.
Dr Jesus Arango, director of research and development at Cobb, agrees that the UK continues to play a strategic and important role in global poultry genetics. “A sizable proportion of the world’s commercial poultry genetics originates from breeding programmes with strong historical roots in Europe, including the UK,” he says. “The UK also serves as a hub to export poultry genetics to several countries within the EMEA region and beyond.”
While the UK is unquestionably in the vanguard, poultry breeding is by no means a provincial occupation and ultimately relies upon international relationships. As Arango points out, genetic progress is driven by global breeding populations, large-scale data systems, and complex R&D investments, with strong contributions coming from the US, Europe, and increasingly Brazil. “Primary breeding companies operate globally, however the UK maintains strengths in genetic research and quantitative breeding science, animal health and welfare innovation, and scientific leadership,” he adds.
Cobb says its approach is now moving beyond classic poultry breeding programmes by integrating biology, data science and emerging technologies. “We are actively developing our data-integration systems to optimise genetic gains,” Arango explains. “We are exploring digital and sensor-based phenotyping to expand our ability to capture complex traits related to behaviour, welfare, and health in a continuous and objective manner. We have enhanced our selection for robustness and health. All of our advancements are within the context of sustainable-based breeding goals, and continual improvements in traits for better resource usage and performance.”
Accelerating breakthroughs
Recent breakthroughs in poultry breeding encompass a wide range of new technologies, giving breeders an enhanced toolkit to develop next-generation solutions. Aviagen notes that these include the increased use of genomics information to assist breeding decisions and the introduction of high-throughput Computed Tomography imaging, coupled with machine-learning algorithms for whole-body assessments of the bird. “With these techniques, we can predict the genetic values of selection candidates for traits – ranging from production efficiency to health and welfare – more accurately,” the company explains. “Imaging technology allows deep insight into the body tissues of the live bird, enabling very accurate predictions of meat yield and quality and welfare-related parameters such as skeletal strength. These technologies contribute directly to sustainable and balanced genetic progress.”
Arango stresses that recent developments have been less about single “frontpage discoveries” or innovation pathways, and are instead more about cumulative advances driven by data, genomics and precision breeding, with all of that enhanced by the implementation of AI tools and models.
The mention of precision breeding naturally brings up one of the biggest talking points in UK agricultural science, and the new precision breeding regulations – which came into force in the UK in November last year – have been touted by supporters as opening up a raft of potential applications within the poultry sector.
Arango believes that as long as there is alignment between science, regulation, cost structure and consumer acceptance, gene editing could unlock a new phase of innovation in partnership with – rather than replacing – conventional breeding. Its best uses, he says, are likely to come from targeted interventions for traits that are difficult to improve through traditional selection alone, in particular for resistance to diseases with global endemic impacts such as HPAI, Newcastle disease or Marek’s. In addition, key benefits of gene editing could include improved robustness and welfare traits to address challenges such as skeletal strength, heat tolerance, or resilience to environmental stressors; reduced zoonotic risk by lowering gastrointestinal colonisation by foodborne pathogens like Salmonella in poultry populations; and improved production efficiency by fine-tuning metabolic pathways that can boost feed efficiency and nutrient use.
While the potential is vast, an April 2026 Animal Welfare Committee report into breeding and breeding technologies in agriculture noted that poultry industry representatives felt that individual genome-edited strains could disrupt and significantly impact their current long-term breeding strategies, and that they favoured improving balanced breeding through more “traditional” genomic selection utilising modern or novel selection and analytical tools.
There is certainly some caution around gene editing, which at present stands primarily as a research tool. “While the technology is advancing very fast, a key requirement for gene editing is the availability of gene targets that can be modified,” the Aviagen team points out. “For example, two recent successful examples of edits in two specific genes in pigs conferred resistance to the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory (PRRS) virus and the Classical Swine Fever (CSF). In poultry it has been postulated that gene editing could be a way to combat avian influenza, but unlike in pigs, there is not – or at least hasn’t been found yet – a single gene target that confers both resistance and eliminates virus shedding. Recent research has indeed shown that for avian influenza more than one edit would be required; it is not clear whether several edits on a bird would fully stop the virus and/or have negative consequences on other biological functions.”
Current legislation is limited to England only and it is unclear if it will have wider consumer acceptance, Aviagen cautions. “In practical terms, there are currently no plans to use gene editing or any other means of genetic modification or gene transfer technology in the foreseeable future. In Aviagen Group breeding programmes, all genetic improvement in commercial breeding programmes is achieved by established selection methods.”
Industry-leading research
As well as work on an individual company level, there are also important initiatives taking place at research institutions. At The Pirbright Institute, for example, an Avian Genetics group was set up in 2024 to study how birds evolve to tolerate viral infections, with the group also using whole-genome sequencing data of pathogens to study the co-evolutionary dynamics of host-pathogen interactions. The group aims to study how diversity within the chicken immune system impacts its ability to respond to viral challenges, to understand how immunogenetic variation is distributed across space and through time, and whether newly discovered functional variation could be leveraged by the poultry industry to improve pathogen resistance and resilience. A further key goal is to understand how economically important viral pathogens, such as Marek’s Disease Virus (MDV), are evolving and how this may lead to emerging lineages of concern with novel phenotypes.
Its most recent work has examined the evolution of virulence in MDV between ancient (low-virulence) and modern (high-virulence) strains, while Pirbright researcher Dr Steve Fiddaman has also collaborated with the University of Oxford’s Professor Adrian Smith on a British Council project in Indonesia aimed at better understanding chicken genetic and immune diversity across Indonesian islands, as well as identifying novel strains of MDV. “The feather samples will be brought to the UK, where we will screen them for evidence of Marek’s Disease Virus, as part of our efforts to understand the global distribution of MDV, its virulence, and its effects on poultry farming”, Fiddaman added.
The Roslin Institute, meanwhile, is a leader in poultry research, and has produced a number of studies showing glimpses of how science can help. One project detailed in May 2026 showed how breeding poultry according to their capacity to shed virus from feathers could improve flock-level protection against Marek’s disease, while another saw scientists from Roslin working with Lohmann Breeders to show that conventional measures of strength in chicken bones – such as their tibia – are a suitable way to determine the likelihood of damage to their keel bones.
Arango sums it up perfectly when he says the future of poultry genetics is being shaped as we speak: “The next decade of poultry breeding will be defined not by a single breakthrough, but by the ability to integrate biology, data science, automation, and artificial intelligence into a unified system capable of delivering healthier, more efficient, and more sustainable birds. All within an evolving global customer base perception, regulatory framework and market expectations.”
Technical marvels
Cobb’s Dr Jesus Arango picks out some of the most exciting new developments in poultry breeding
Genomic selection at scale: Over recent decades, genomic selection has become a cornerstone of modern poultry breeding, establishing a new paradigm for genetic selection and improvement across agriculture species. By leveraging dense genetic markers across the genome, breeding programmes can now predict the genetic merit of birds with far greater accuracy and at earlier stages of life. The integration of full genomic data has significantly accelerated selection responses, improving traits such as feed efficiency, robustness and health, and reproductive performance.
Balanced “profit-based” breeding indices: Modern poultry genetic programmes optimise progress across multiple economically important traits simultaneously, rather than maximising a single trait. Phenotypes can be grouped into logic bio-complexes for genetic analyses and prediction of breeding values. Then, these multiple values are used to compute a final attribute for selection – “the index value”. The index value combines genomic, genealogy and phenotypic data for multiple phenotypes measured in elite populations, and are driven by each trait’s contribution value on the final profit of the commercial bird (a commercial breeder or broiler). By balancing profit-index emphasis across traits and bio-complexes, genetic progress can be optimised across male and female lines, to maximise the performance of the commercial chickens.
Digital phenotyping, the era of precision farming and AI: The use of sensors, RFIDs, imaging/computer vision (cameras, computer tomography (CT), spectral technologies and so on) and automated data capture enables more precise measurement of traits related to performance, behaviour, and other traits related to animal welfare and health. Four technologies deserve special mention for their potential impact on genetic progress of economic traits: real-time feed conversion using RFID-integrated systems, CT scanning, Micro-NIR (non-destructive sensing tools that use specific light wavelengths to assess the chemical and structural properties of muscle tissue), and camera-based phenotyping.