Genetic Diversity Analysis of Four Sheep Breeds of Iran: Towards Genetic Maintenance and Conservation Decision

The present study was conducted to measure the genetic diversity and population genetic structure of four Iranian sheep breeds, namely; Ghezel, Makui, Kurdi and Baluchi (utilizing 20 animals per breed from both sexes) using 12 short tandem repeats markers. Our results demonstrated that the observed number of alleles and the median number of effective alleles for the Ghezel Makui, Kurdi, and Baluchi breeds were (50, 48, 44 and 43) and (2.49, 2.46, 2.45 and 2.47), respectively. Also, the mean Shannon Index was 0.982, 0.939, 0.965, and 0.959 values for Ghezel, Makui, Kurdi, and Baluchi breed, respectively. Moreover, the polymorphic information content (PIC) values were ranked from 0.09 (ILSTS011) to 0.75 (TGLA13). Additionally, the average inbreeding coefficient (FIS) was from 0.144 (Kurdi) to 0.306 (Makui). Furthermore, the lowest genetic distance was seen between Makui and Baluchi breeds (0.120), but the highest was between Ghezel and Kurdi breeds (0.884). The outcomes of this research showed the normal ‘L’-shaped distribution of the mode-shift analysis test and the lack of bottleneck in the studied populations. On this basis, we conclude that the investigated Iranian sheep breeds carry reasonable within and between genetic diversity.