Diversity and genetic relationships among seven west African goat breeds

This study was carried out to determine the genetic relationships among seven west African goat breeds : Casamance Goat (Kolda, Senegal), Labe Goat (Fouta Djallon, Guinea), three Sahel Goat (Djoloff Senegal; Maradi, Niger; Gorgol, Mauritania) red Sokoto Goat (Maradi, Niger) and Guera goat (Atar, Mauritania). The polymorphism of six microsatellites and the alpha(s1)-casein locus was analysed. The six microsatellite loci were polymorphic with a mean number of alleles ranging from 2.71 to 4.0. At the alpha(s1)-casein locus, A and B were the most frequent alleles, which are known to be associated with a high level of protein synthesis. A neighbour-joining tree and a Principal Component Analysis were performed and the reliability of both methods was tested. Our study shows that the genetic relationships among the breeds analysed correspond to their geographical distribution and in addition, that the Labe Goat is strongly separated from the other breeds. Among the seven markers used, four have an effect on the distribution of breeds while three seem to be non-informative.