An approach to rapidly identify the gender of the pigeon by using cross-priming amplification with immune-chromatographic strip

Abstract

Abstract Most of birds are monomorphic species and breeds, which makes it difficult to determine their gender by appearances, especially the pigeon is a farm animal with an economic interest in meat production, ornamentals, sports, and experimental animals. Until now, only endoscopy, laparoscopy, karyotyping, and DNA testing are available, but these methods are expensive, invasive, or time-consuming for the determination gender of the pigeon. Therefore, an easy, accurate, sensitive, on-site, affordable, and applicable rapid identification of the gender of the pigeon is widely needed for the owner of the pigeon. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the efficacy of Cross-priming amplification (CPA) combined with an immune-chromatographic strip (CPA-strip) for gender identification of the pigeon. The methodology was optimized through various experimental trials. Subsequently, ten samples collected from pigeons were subjected to analysis using the optimized CPA-strip assay, and the results indicated that all female samples were accurately detected. In contrast, the blood samples collected from chickens and ducks were negative when tested with the CPA-strip assay. In conclusion, our study demonstrates the successful establishment of an immune-chromatographic CPA-strip assay for the on-site gender determination of pigeons with high accuracy.