<span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language: HI" lang="EN-GB">Microsatellite marker based assessment of genetic structure of Coimbatore breed of sheep (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Ovis aries</i>) in Tamil Nadu </span>

Abstract

Coimbatore sheep, popularly known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Kurumbai Adu</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Coimbatore Kurumbai</i>, produce coarse carpet wool in addition to their use mainly as meat animal. In the present study, a total of 24 microsatellite primer sets were utilized to characterize the Coimbatore sheep. The number of alleles ranged from 2 (CSSM47, CSSM31 & MAF214) to 10 (OarHH47 & OarHH35) with a mean of 5.58±0.50 across all loci. The alleles were distributed at frequencies between 0.1951 (141 bp allele in OarHH47 locus) and 0.9375 (132 bp allele in OarHH64 locus). The size of alleles ranged from 82 (OarCP49) to 279 bp (HSC). The mean polymorphism information content (PIC) value was 0.5851±0.04. The results of the chi-square test of goodness of fit revealed that the opulation was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) proportions in 12 microsatellite loci and the remaining 13 loci departed from HWE. The observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.0625 to 0.9767 with a mean value of 0.6255<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">±0.05, while the expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.1187 to 0.8703 with a mean of 0.6298<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">±0.04. Majority of loci (15 out of 24 loci) showed inbreeding, as reflected by the positive F_IS values. The markers used in the study were found to be highly informative and explored high genetic variation in the population, which could be exploited for their improvement.<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">

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