GENETIC DIVERSITY BETWEEN BALADI CHICKEN BREED AND SASSO AND ROSS STRAINS USING MICROSATELLITE MARKERS

: Sixty individuals from two commercial strains Sasso (n=20), Ross (n=20), and one local chicken breed Baladi (n=20) were amplified by 12 microsatellite markers. Over 12 loci in three chicken populations, we found a total of 96 alleles with an average of 8 alleles per locus. There were 15 alleles in locus ADL0315; and only 3 alleles in locus MCW0210. In specific alleles, overall loci (12 microsatellite loci) found 39 out of 96 alleles (40.63 %) with three populations. Twenty distinct alleles were found for the Baladi breed and 5 alleles for the Sasso strain, while 14 were found for the Ross strain. Most frequencies of alleles were distributed with low frequency, but the 14 allele frequency was higher than 0.5. The PIC and He averages in the Baladi breed were 0.679 and 0.70, respectively, while those in the Sasso strain were 0.588 and 0.61, respectively, which were the lowest. In Baladi chicken breed has highly informative PIC values exceed 0.5 except one marker of MCW0210 had reasonably informative markers. Also, in Sasso chicken strain has highly informative PIC values exceed 0.5 except five markers of MCW0210, ADL0037, MCW0206, MCW0002, and ADL0158 had reasonably informative markers. Finally, in Ross chicken strain has highly informative PIC values exceed 0.5 except three markers of MCW0210, ADL0037 and MCW0016 had reasonably informative markers. The mean values of IC obtained estimate 0.23 and 0.28 for Baladi breed and Sasso strain respectively, indicating the high level of inbreeding indicating low variability in their populations. While the mean value of 0.1 for the Ross breed indicating high variability in this breed. These findings could be attributed to a more recent divergence of Ross than Baladi breed and Sasso strain.