Impact of genetic drift on access and benefit sharing under the Nagoya Protocol: The case of the Meishan pig1

Abstract

Genetic drift (GD) randomly impacts small breeds and imported populations. Therefore, it can impact policies that affect conservation of animal genetic resources. This paper evaluates GD for a population of Meishan pigs imported into the United States and explores the ramifications of GD on access and benefit sharing of genetic resources under the Nagoya Protocol (NP) of the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity. The NP was motivated by concerns about fair and equitable benefit sharing of genetic resources across life forms. In this experiment, 35 microsatellite markers were used to quantify the level of GD that occurred between Meishan pigs (Meishan-China; n = 22) imported into the United States in the late 1980s and contemporary Meishan (Meishan-US; n = 42), which have been randomly bred since importation. The Meishan-US consisted of 2 subpopulations (Meishan-MARC and Meishan-ISU). Five other breeds were also included in the analysis to serve as reference populations: Fengjing and Minzhu, which were imported with Meishan-China, and Duroc, Berk-shire, and Yorkshire from the United States. Mean shift in allele frequency was 0.11 (SE = 0.019) due to GD for Meishan-US vs. Meishan-China with some loci having changed allele frequencies by greater than 0.20. Principle coordinate analysis confirmed divergence among the Meishan populations. Model-based clustering tended to place the U.S. and Chinese breeds into 2 distinct clusters, likely due to differences in allele frequencies between U.S. and Chinese breeds. Contemporary Meishan-US has become differentiated from the original imported animals due to GD. Attributing future performance of Meishan-US to Meishan-China, as set forth by NP, is problematic due to GD. As an imported breed becomes established there will be an increasing number of breeders who may have different selection goals and private treaty contracts will govern the exchange of stock between them. Therefore, considering biological phenomena and social dynamics simultaneously draws into question whether a rigorous access and benefit sharing protocol as envisioned in the NP will be operational.

A Genetic Investigation of Island Jersey Cattle, the Foundation of the Jersey Breed: Comparing Population Structure and Selection to Guernsey, Holstein, and United States Jersey Cattle

“…The Jersey sub-populations showed the lowest divergence amongst one another with a pairwise F ST value of less than 0.08. This F ST level is similar to that observed with other livestock breeds when comparing exported populations to the progenitor population (Blackburn et al, 2014). In contrast to expectation, Holsteins were more closely related to both the Guernseys (F ST = 0.13) and Jerseys (F ST ∼ 0.14) than the relationship between the two Channel Island breeds of Jersey and Guernsey (F ST = 0.17).…”

Assessing Sus scrofa diversity among continental United States, and Pacific islands populations using molecular markers from a gene banks collection

“…As larger K’s were evaluated, additional breeds were identified as their own cluster and several breeds were partitioned into subpopulations e.g., YK and ME. The separation of the three ME subpopulations was a function of genetic drift 11 . However, the YK subpopulations are likely due to imported animals during the 1980’s which were widely used within that breed.

Figure 2Population Structure of all US, Pacific Islands and China populations revealed by Admixture assignment proportions, where K is the number of assumed ancestral clusters that ranged from 2 to 21.

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“…The Meishan was composed of three subpopulations 11 denoted by Meishan – IM (samples from the original Meishan importation), Meishan – U (randomly mated control herd maintained at Iowa State University) and Meishan – MARC (randomly mated control herd maintained by USDA-ARS).…”

A Review of Living Collections with Special Emphasis on Sustainability and Its Impact on Research Across Multiple Disciplines

“… 86 Moreover, limits to accession can impact the ability of collections to maintain sufficient populations to avoid the problem of genetic drift. 87 , 88 …”