Genetic Characterization of Indigenous Duck of North-East Region using Microsatellite Markers

Abstract

Background: Duck farming plays a significant role, next to chicken in the socio-economic uplift men of the rural farmers of North-East India. Pati duck is the most common duck breed in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam and the other common variety reared in North-East India is Chara-Chambeli, however it originatein Kerala. Genetic characterization plays a significant role for formulation of breeding strategies for improvement of any breed. Microsatellites are codominant in nature and are highly polymorphic. High level of allelic variation, co-dominant mode of inheritance and potential for automated analysis make them an excellent tool for genotyping, mapping and genetic characterization. Pati duck is the most common duck breed in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam and the other common variety reared in North-East India is Chara-Chambeli however its origin in Kerela. Therefore, the present investigation was carried out to characterize these two duck breeds using microsatellite markers to evaluate the genetic diversity in these two duck population. Methods: For the present study, Blood sample were collected from 50 Patiducks and 50 Chara-Chambeli ducks from different parts of North-East India. Assessment of genetic characterization of duck breeds of north-east region were carried out using 16 microsatellite markers and population genetics analysis were done by POPGENE software. Result: In the present study, all the studied loci were highly polymorphic. Analysis generated a total of 41 microsatellite alleles. The number of observed alleles (Na) with an overall mean of 1.93±0.258. However, the effective number of alleles (Ne) with a mean of 1.6933±0.2712. The Shannon’s information index was found to a mean value of 0.5685±0.1693. The overall means for observed (HO) and expected (He) heterozygosities were 0.2889±0.2477 and 0.5289±0.0853, respectively. The chi-square (χ2) test for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium revealed that all the loci are in within Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.