Population structure of four indigenous chicken breeds undergoing in situ conservation

The latest advances in molecular biology techniques, such as microsatellite markers, have provided new opportunities to evaluate the genetic variability among animals at the genetic level. Numerous studies have coin prised in icrosatellite analyses of genetic diversity among chicken breeds, including analysis of local chicken breeds, although very few publications referred to genetic differentiation among indigenous chicken breeds carried out over-time. The main goal of this study was to analyse the genetic diversity and population structure of local native chicken breeds undergoing in situ conservation. The genetic variability of four populations: the Green-legged Partridgelike chicken (GP), the Transylvanian Naked Neck Black (TNB), Transylvanian Naked Neck White (TNW) and the Hungarian Speckled (HS) was evaluated based on the presence of eight microsatellite markers (on average 27 individuals per breed). Our study presents an average genetic variation between the TNB and HS breeds (Fst=0.20) and a high genetic variation between the TNB and TNW breeds (Fst=0.35). Measures of genetic variability show no statistically significant differences between expected and observed heterozygosity. Comparing these results to the ones obtained in 2009 and 2010 we can state that the structure of these populations has not changed after 10 years of in situ conservation. These results indicate that this type of animal management had no negative effect on these populations. Our study identified 19 private alleles for the analysed populations. The results of our experiment emphasise the abundance of genetic diversity among these indigenous chicken breeds.