Usability of metadata analysis of goat genetic resources among five countries from Africa, Asia and Europe: Metadata analysis of goat genetic

Abstract

Abstract. Goats play a variety of roles all around the globe due to their capability to acclimatize different environmental conditions quite quickly since they have been regarded as one of the first sets of animals domesticated by the human. Even though domestic goats harbor precious genetic materials, research funding among developing countries is a major drawback for thorough study on them. Therefore, microsatellite markers seem to be affordable and informative. Genotypic data from different goat breeds across five countries (Nigeria, South Africa, Pakistan, France and Spain) was generated using eleven microsatellite markers for a comparative study in order to evaluate the usefulness of the available data for genetic characterization and identify the shortcomings of meta-analyses for combined data. The mean number of alleles (MNA) per population range from 6.44±2.83 alleles for Spanish to 10.25±0.96 for Pakistani goats, with an overall mean of 13.55±7.28. Observed heterozygosity (Ho) ranges from 0.61±0.02 to 0.83±0.01 for Spanish goats and Pakistani goats, respectively with an overall mean of 0.65. Ho of the markers used ranged from 0.569 (INRA5) to 0.793 (MM12). Highest and least polymorphic information content (PIC) was observed in loci MM12 (0.925) and MAF209 (0.489), respectively. All the populations showed significant change from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (P>0.05) indicating a low level of inbreeding. The genetic distance of each country’s goat populations ranged from 0.151 to 4.245. The highest genetic distance (4.245) was observed between Spanish and Pakistani goats while the lowest were observed between Spanish and French goats. Spanish and French goats are from a common ancestor while South African, Nigerian and Pakistani goats came from another ancestor or cluster. A lot of genetic admixture in the Nigerian ecotypes has been observed whereas France and Saudi Arabian breeds have been subjected to high amount of selection pressure.