FORMATION OF THE BREEDING CORE OF RABBITS OF A NEW BREED BASED ON THE ASSESSMENT OF FERTILITY AND POPULATION-GENETIC STRUCTURE
The group will be used to create a new meat-skin breed of rabbits to expand the gene pool on industrial farms and intensify the production of rabbit meat. In the future, it is possible to replace imported foreign rabbits with domestic breeding material, which will increase the economic indicators of the rabbit breeding industry and get rid of import dependence. Rabbits and males of the breeding nucleus are homogeneous in phenotype - the general color of the hair is white, ears, nose, tail tip, paws are gray, fluff is pure white, and morphometric indicators corresponding to the mesosomal type of constitution. Adult rabbits of the breeding core (n= 25 heads) are superior in reproductive qualities to rabbits of the main herd (p<0.001) and are characterized by the following productive qualities: average fecundity - 9.16 ± 0.20; rabbits left under the female - 8.76 ± 0.19; the yield of young animals to jigging - 8.12 ± 0.20 heads. The females of the repair young stock of the breeding core (n=98 heads) correspond to the characteristics (according to the litter of origin): the average fertility is 9.08± 0.10; the yield to jigging is 8.28± 0.10 rabbits per female. To consolidate desirable traits when creating a new breed, the best breeding option is mating inbred males with outbred females (the second experimental group). A comparison of the genetic structures of rabbits of the new breed being created using highly polymorphic molecular markers flanked by inverted repeats of retrotransposons allowed us to identify a second group of animals distinguishable from others by the spectra of the amplification products of the Sabrina 111 retrotransposon, which, according to the genetic distances of M.Ney, enters the general clustering with the final cross of the Spring, assuming the involvement of the presented mobile genetic element in the breeding process.