Pemencilan dan Pencirian Populasi Eimeria tenella daripada Ayam Hutan Tempatan

Eimeria tenella is one of the seven Eimeria species that infects chicken. Infection of this parasite causes coccidiosis, which brings about great economic losses to the poultry industry. It is believed that the parasite in the domestic chicken originates from and/or is closely related with the strain present in the jungle fowl. Thus, characterisation of Eimeria species isolated from the local jungle fowl will provide new knowledge to increase the understanding of the biology of this parasite. In the study reported here, the Eimeria population AH1 was isolated from the intestinal tract of a local jungle fowl. Based on a serial passage, it was found that the production of oocysts from the AH1 population in domestic chicken depends on the age of the oocysts and the dose of infection. Morphological characterisation showed that the AH1 population oocysts are ovoid in shape with most of the oocysts possessing a polar granule. The mean dimension of the AH1 population oocysts is 22.51 (+- 0.17) * 17.30 (+- 0.14) μm. The size of the AH1 population oocysts is significantly different (p 0.05) compared to the size of oocysts of the reference, E. tenella Houghton strain. Multiplex polymerase chain reaction amplification of the AH1 population produced a band of ~540 bp in size, which correlates with the size of the product specific for E. tenella. The results of our study confirm that the Eimeria population AH1 isolated from the local jungle fowl, consists of E. tenella parasites