Assessment oF Phylogenetic Relationship and Genetic Variability among Some Duck Breeds Using RAPD-PCR as Molecular Markers

RAPD-PCR was utilized to assess the phylogenetic relationship and genetic variation among four duck breeds; Muscovy, Sudani, Pekin and Moulard, which reared in Egypt. A total of 13 arbitrary short primers were used and they generated polymorphic, reproducible and scoreable bands. These primers produced 92 bands Out of these scored bands, 37 (40.2%) were recognized as monomorphic and 55 (59.8%) as polymorphic bands. OPC-1 produced the highest percentage (100%) of polymorphic bands, while OPA-18 generated the lowest percentage (37.5%) of polymorphic bands. Interbreed of band sharing frequencies ranged from 0.79±0.06 between Muscovy-Moulard to 0.65±0.06 between Sudani-Pekin. Three primers (OPA-12, OPA-18 and OPA-20) in Sudani, six primers (OPA-08, OPA-15, OPA-17, OPB-15, OPC-01 and OPF-09) in Pekin were specified for these breeds. The highest genetic distance 6.32 was found between Sudani-Pekin, while the lowest genetic distances 4.90 was found between Muscovy - Moulard. The study suggests the ability of RAPD- PCR to estimate the genetic distance and reflect the genetic changes and relations among the studied duck breeds.