Genetic polymorphism between pure and crossbred guinea fowl populations

Two selected i.e. Pearl (P), Lavender (L) and one indigenous (IND) population of guinea fowl was used to estimate genetic polymorphism between different populations of guinea fowl viz, PxP, LxL, PLxL, INDxL, PxIND, LxIND, LxPL and INDxPL. A total of 810 randomly chosen individuals from each group were used. RAPD analysis was done using 18 short oligonucleotide primers (10 mer) of random primers. The average number of bands per primer was 5.70. A total of 97 bands were amplified from 18 random primers. Over all these bands resolved in the size ranges of 165 bp to 3119 bp. Out of 18 primers, 9 primers (50.00%) were found to be polymorphic, however these primers could not detect a sizable polymorphism as all these primers as only 14 polymorphic bands could be detected. Number of polymorphic bands ranged from 1 to 3. The genetic similarity between different guinea fowl populations, estimated in terms of band sharing proportion ranged from 0.898 to 0.970 based on all the polymorphic primers, while the genetic distances ranged from 0.032 to 0.117, respectively. These results revealed very low genetic diversity among these populations.