Characterization of population structure and genetic diversity of Adani goats

Characterization of population structure and genetic diversity of Adani goats of Iran was assessed through pedigree analysis by using the pedigree data on 2535 kids (offspring of 748 does and 106 bucks), collected for a period of 12 years (2003 through 2014). The kids born during 2011 to 2014 were considered as the reference population. A small proportion of kids (4.10%) were inbred with mean inbreeding coefficients of 0.31 and 7.68 % for the whole and inbred populations, respectively. The mean of generation interval, computed from four gametic pathways including sire-son, sire-daughter, dam-son and dam-daughter, was 2.87 years, with a longer interval from dam-progeny pathway relative to the sire-progeny ones. The effective population size estimated from the individual rate in inbreeding was 45.6. Probability of gene origin measures including the effective numbers of founders (fe), ancestors (fa), founder genomes (fg) and non-founder genomes (fng) were 26, 25, 18 and 70, respectively. Approximately, 50% and 75 % of the total genetic variations were explained by the first 11 and 37 influential ancestors, with a maximum individual contribution of 11.8%. The ratio of fe to fa, as a measure of bottleneck, was 1.04. The average values for genetic conservation index (GCI) in whole, male and female individuals were 2.57, 2.85 and 2.36, respectively. The results revealed that although 3% of the total heterozygosity had been lost from the population, a considerable genetic variability still existed in the population of Adani goats.