Genetic Variation and Bottleneck Tests in Iraqi Native Cows of Babylon Province by STR Markers

In the current study, we evaluated genetic variation and bottleneck analyses of Iraqi native cows in three locations of Babylon province. A total of 70 individuals of three cows' population were genotyped using ten the short tandem repeat markers (STR). The STR loci showed high variation of polymorphism. The average total number of alleles (TNA) and effective number of alleles (Ae) values were 5.30± 0.17 and 3.89± 0.11, respectively. The TNA at the marker level ranged from 3.00 (ETH3) to 8.00 (TGLA227), while the Ae ranged from 2.69 (ETH3) to 5.54 (TGLA227). The Shannon index (I) at the marker level ranged from 1.05 (ETH3) to 1.87 (TGLA227), with mean 1.48± 0.28. Also, the mean polymorphism information content (PIC) was 0.65±0.15, with a range of 0.54 (ETH3) to 0.81 (TGLA227). The average observed heterozygosity (Obs_Het) was 0.54 ± 0.18 and varied from 0.16 (ETH3) to 0.77 (TGLA53). The average expected heterozygosity (Exp_Het) was 0.75±0.25, with a range of 0.62 (ETH3) to 0.85 (TGLA227). The means HS unbiased gene diversity, and inbreeding coefficient (FIS) were 0.73±0.23, and 0.24±0.09, respectively. The mean Fis, Fit and Fst, and gene flow (Nm) were 0.296 ± 0.065, 0.314 ± 0.090, 0.032 ± 0.002, and 7.259 ± 2.113 respectively. The native cow's population is not at bottleneck, and normal L-shaped distribution of allele frequencies, that it has not experienced any recent decline in effective population size and has remained in equilibrium between mutation and drift. The Bayesian analysis showed that all animals were heterogeneous and formed three distinct clusters.