Evaluation of genetic diversity and population structure in four indigenous duck breeds in Vietnam.

This study characterized genetic diversity and population structure of four indigenous Vietnamese duck breeds and an exotic breed for setting the conservation priority. A total of 200 samples from four duck breeds ( and ) and an exotic breed () were genotyped for fifteen microsatellite markers. The average number of alleles per locus was 14.07. A moderate genetic diversity was observed for indigenous breeds as mean of observed and expected heterozygosity as Ho = 0.50 and He = 0.57, respectively. The had the lowest values of Ho (0.41) and He (0.48) while had the highest values of Ho (0.6) and He (0.69), respectively. The inbreeding coefficients () ranged from 0.12 to 0.16, and all breeds were significantly under heterozygote deficit. Nei's genetic distance was the shortest between and . The discriminant analysis of principal components of studied breeds resulted in four genetic clusters. The and breeds joined the same genetic cluster while other breeds had their own clusters. These results indicated that the possibility to combine and for reducing the cost of conservation and suggested that conservation of the should be prioritized to avoid inbreeding depression and genetic drift.