Lack of genetic differentiation in milkfish, Chanos chanos (Forsskål, 1775), revealed by mitochondrial ATPase 6/8 genes.

The milkfish, Chanos chanos, is a commercially important cultured species which is distributed throughout south and southeast Asian countries. Captive breeding and seed production techniques have been standardized recently in India and there is a need for analyzing its population structure along the Indian coast. A total of 80 samples from four different locations across the Indian coast were analyzed by using ATPase 6/8 genes. Analysis revealed the existence of 25 haplotypes across populations with the haplotype diversity in the range of 0.5684-0.8053 and the nucleotide diversity varied from 0.001838 to 0.002519. The variation within and among populations accounted for 97.43% and 2.75%, respectively. The observed F values were found to be non-significant (p > 0.05). Results from this study indicated that there is lack of genetic divergence between the populations of milkfish along the Indian coast.