In January 2015 I was invited by Ms. Henriette van der Zwan to become associated study leader of her PDH study to sequence the genome of genus Agapornis.
The first species on the list was Agapornis roseicollis and in 2016 we collected blood samples of these birds. The genome of Agapornis roseicollis has been sequenced in 2017. (DNA sequencing is the process of determining the precise order of nucleotides within a DNA molecule).
Our first article on the lovebird genome “Draft De Novo Genome Sequence of Agapornis roseicollis for Application in Avian Breeding” by Henriëtte van der Zwan, Francois van der Westhuizen, Carina Visser & Rencia van der Sluis” was published in October 2017. Please feel free to read it here:
Currently, we are busy developing the parentage verification test for all lovebird species. This will allow breeders and buyers to verify the parents of a bird before it is sold.
We also hope to develop a test to determine if a young is a split for a specific color mutation, even before it is sold. This will, however, be in a later stage of the study and this will be the hardest part since it has never been done before and it will probably take a few years.
