Genetic diversity and relationship among southern Indian goat breeds based on microsatellite markers

Genetic diversity and relationship among goat breeds of southern India were investigated based on microsatellite markers. All five breeds of south India, namely Attappady, Osmanabadi, Sangamneri, Malabari and Kanniadu, along with Ganjam of eastern India were considered for the investigation. In total, 190 alleles were observed from 288 DNA samples analysed with 25 microsatellite loci across six breeds. The most diverse breed was Kanniadu and the least was Osmanabadi. Gene diversity for each breed ranged from 0.73 in Kanniadu to 0.61 in Osmanabadi. The genetic distance tended to be least (0.22) between Ganjam and Malabari and the widest (0.83) between Kanniadu and Malabari. The genetic differentiation between different pairs of the breeds was significantly different from zero. Majority of the loci in almost all the breeds were heterozygote deficit. The overall Fis value (0.20) was moderate and significantly different from zero. Principal-component analysis showed the clustering of the goat breeds according to their geographical origin. Therefore, the geographical origin of the breeds should be taken into consideration while deciding conservation and improvement options for these breeds.