Genetic Diversity Analysis of Macherla Brown Sheep Using Microsatellite Markers

Abstract

A total of 275 alleles were observed for the twenty four marker loci under investigation in the sampled Macherla Brown population. The number of alleles at each locus varied from eight (BM6506, HSC, OarCP34) to eighteen (MAF214) with a mean of 11.458 alleles. Allele size ranged from 69 bp (OarCP20) to 313 bp (MAF214), while allele frequency varied between 0.0102 (HSC, INRA63, MAF214, OarP49 and OarVH72) to 0.2551 (HSC). The number of effective alleles across twenty four microsatellite loci studied ranged from 5.8065 (HSC) to 14.1652 (OarFCB48). The mean number of effective alleles was 9.597 ± 2.454. The observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.0612 (BM8125) to 0.2653 (OarCP34) whereas, the expected heterozygosity varied from 0.8278 (HSC) to 0.9294 (OarFCB48). All the twenty four microsatellite loci (100 percent) were found to be highly polymorphic and the PIC values varied from 0.8052 (HSC) to 0.9295 (OarFCB48) with the mean PIC value of 0.882 ± 0.036. The Chi-square test revealed that all the twenty four loci significantly deviated from Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. The inbreeding estimates obtained in this study were all positive and ranged from 0.6915 (OarCP34) to 0.9341 (OarFCB48) with the mean F_IS value of 0.876 ± 0.057 indicating the high deficiency of heterozygotes. The bottle neck analysis revealed that population has not undergone any recent reduction. The study revealed that Macherla brown sheep with increasing population trend needs genetic management for the conservation and improvement.