Study of genetic polymorphism of various chicken breeds using microsatellite markers

A total number of 76 randomly selected birds i.e. 20 of Hill fowl (HF), 14 of Rhode Island Red (RIR), 14 of Kadaknath (KN), 14 of White Leghorn (WLH) and 14 of White Cornish (WC) were genotyped using 25 microsatellite markers in the present study. Out of 25 microsatellite loci, 17 (similar to 70%) were found to be polymorphic among these breeds. Across the breeds, total number of alleles ranged from 2 to 3 at polymorphic locus and average number of alleles per locus was 2.41. The allele size ranged between 98 bp and 340 bp. Among all the polymorphic microsatellite loci, observed heterozygosity were 0.441, 0.415, 0.287, 0.296 and 0.376 and expected heterozygosity were 0.435, 0.443, 0.387, 0.384 and 0.442 in BF, RIR, KN, WLH and WC, respectively. Polymorphic Information Content (PIC) estimates, across all the polymorphic loci were 0.346, 0.342, 0.305, 0.297 and 0.330 in HF, RIR, KN, WLH and WC, respectively.