Discrimination of the commercial Korean native chicken population using microsatellite markers

Abstract

Background: Korean native chicken (KNC) is a well-known breed due to its superior meat taste. This breed, however,owing to a low growth rate, has a high market price. In order to overcome this disadvantage, the National Instituteof Animal Science (NIAS) in Korea developed a commercial KNC breed, named Woorimatdag version 2 (WM2), anupgraded version of the Woorimatdag (WM1) breed and the WM2 was created by crossing the KNC with meat typebreeds. This study aims to discriminate between WM2 and other chicken breeds using microsatellite (MS) markers. Methods: A total of 302 individuals from eight Korean chicken populations were examined. The genetic diversity andpopulation structure analysis were investigated using Cervus, API-CALC, STRUCTURE, PowerMarker programs. Results: Based on heterozygosity and polymorphic information content (PIC) values, 30 MS markers were initiallyselected from 150 markers. The identified average number of alleles (Na), expected heterozygosity, and PIC values forthe WM2 samples were 7.17, 0.741, and 0.682, respectively. Additionally, the paternity of individuals was assigned witha success rate of greater than 99% using 12 markers, the best minimum number of markers. The 12 selected markerscontained heterozygosity and PIC values above 0.7 and probability of identity values around zero. Using these markers,the determined probability of identity (PI), PIhalf-sibs, and PIsibs values were 3.23E-33, 5.03E-22, and 8.61E-08, respectively. Conclusions: WM2 is well differentiated with respect to other chicken breeds based on estimated genetic distances. The results presented here will contribute to the identification of commercial WM2 chicken in the market.