Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was used to analyze blood samples of Munjal and Nali sheep breeds. In the present study, RAPD-PCR method was used to amplify DNA samples using forty arbitrary oligonucleotide primers. Only seven primers found informative. From the 7 random primers, a total of 91 bands were amplified between breeds and 71 of these (78.02%) were found to be polymorphic. In Munjal, overall percentage polymorphism of 71.73 was observed, while in Nali it was 84.44. Genetic distance between breeds was 0.95. MAPD values of 22.85 and 29.46 were observed in Munjal and Nali breeds, respectively, while MAPD 46.88 was observed between breeds. One primer (OPV-09) in Munjal and one primer (OPV-09) in Nali were found to be specific for these breeds. The scientific data presented in the study suggests that RAPD-PCR could be used as a valuable tool in the molecular characterization and genetic diversity study.

The present study was conducted for breed characterization and genetic diversity within and between Murrah, Bhadawari and Nili-Ravi breeds by RAPD-PCR. Genomic DNA was isolated from 20 unrelated animals of each breed. Out of 40 random primers of operon series OPU and OPV, only ten were found informative and were used further for amplification of genomic DNA. From the amplification profile of these primers values of band frequency, genetic distance, genetic similarity, band sharing frequency, average percentage difference and mean average percentage difference was calculated from ten random primers. A total of 188 bands were amplified between as in three breeds and out of these 112 were polymorphic (59.57%). In Murrah, Bhadawari and Nili-Ravi overall polymorphism of 65.51, 63.49 and 53.44 percent were observed respectively. Higher genetic similarities of 0.84, 0.77 and 0.70 in Murrah, Bhadawari and Nili-Ravi were observed respectively. Mean Average Percentage Difference (MAPD) values of 11.41, 13.62 and 18.53 were observed in Murrah, Bhadawari and Nili-Ravi. MAPD values of 69.0, 67.0 and 40.0 were observed between Bhadawari and Nili-Ravi, Bhadawari and Murrah and Murrah and Nili-Ravi respectively. These values indicated the higher genetic diversity between breeds. Therefore, RAPD-PCR plays an important tool in species identification, speciation and breed identification as well as phylogeny analysis.

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