Maternal Haplogroup identification of horse population in Ardabil province using mitochondrial control region

Conservation of indigenous animal is one of the main goals of animal breeding and identification of genetic structure of population is the basis for breed conservation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the genetic structure and the genetic relationship between native horses’ in Ardabil Province using mitochondrial D-loop region. Blood samples were collected from 100 horses. Total DNA was extracted and 430 bp of D-Loop region (hyper variable) were amplified and sequenced using Sanger sequencing method. The analysis of data led to identify 48 polymorphic sites that create 52 haplotypes. The plotted phylogenic tree for haplotypes of Iranian native horses is placed in the 9 haplogroups including A, B, C, G, I, L, M, P and Q. Genetic and haplotype diversity values were 0.0241 and 0.877, respectively. Tajima D was calculated -0.571 which was not significant (p>0.1). Results of this study indicated that the maternal line of Ardabil horses had high genetic diversity.