ROUGH-TEXTURED: A FEATHER STRUCTURE MUTANT OF JAPANESE QUAIL

In a hatch from an experimental population of Japanese quail Coturnix coturnix japonica 13 chicks were noted to have down, whose handling texture was extremely rough. As adults the rough-textured feather phenotype was also apparent. Genetic analysis indicated this feather structure mutant is autosomal, recessive, and inherited in a simple Mendelian fashion. The symbol rt was assigned to the rough-textured gene. A maternal effect, reducing embryo viability, was noted in progeny from rt/rt female parents. A comparison between the morphologies of the rough-textured trait in the Japanese quail and the fray feathered trait as reported in the chicken suggests the two traits do not exhibit gene homology.