Microsatillate based Parentage Verification in Crossbred Sheep Herds

Parentage testing is an important tool in farm animals for genetically determining the accuracy of pedigree information. The objective of the current study was to implication of multiplexing 14 microsatellite markers for routine parentage testings. The twenty-four lambs were crossbred of Ghazel × Baluchi, Ghazel × Baluchi × Merinos, and Baluchi × Moghani × Merinos breeds. The genomic DNA was extracted from the whole blood samples and genotyped using fragment analysis method. The highest and the reproducible multiplex group appeared by grouping ILSTS0049, MCM512, BMC1009, BM148 and CSSM032 loci in 5-plex reaction. The markers were first evaluated based on the number of alleles, allelic frequency, polymorphism information content (PIC), expected heterozygosity (HE), observed heterozygosity (HO) and the individual exclusion probability using popgene and cervus software. The average heterozygosity, polymorphism index content (PIC) and number of alleles per loci were 0.60, 0.58 and 4.93, respectively. The total exclusion probability of 14 microsatellite loci was 0.9999 in the population by compatibility according to the Mendelian fashion. The pedigree was considered incorrect in one out of all the evaluated progeny, as the genotype of that progeny did not match to any of its parents. The results of our study suggest the multiplex microsatellite panel a fast, robust, reliable, and economically efficient tool to verify the parentage and hence it can be used in the routine parentage testing in sheep.