Molecular Evaluation of Three Populations of Farafra Sheep in Comparison to Ossimi and Rahmani Sheep Breeds

Molecular markers are the most ideal approach to study genetic diversity. Consequently, we utilized both ISSR and RAPD markers to assess genetic diversity and relationships among three different populations of Farafra, Ossimi and Rahmani Egyptian sheep breeds. Both ISSR and RAPD gave moderate polymorphism 41.3% and 48.51%, respectively. Besides, this value was consistent with the moderate value of the mean of polymorphism information content (0.16 and 0.20, respectively). Farafra-F and Farafra-D populations had the highest similarity which was 0.92 for ISSR and 0.90 for the RAPD marker. Furthermore, ISSR and RAPD constructed dendrogram separated all the studied sheep into two main clusters. All the three populations of Farafra breed combined into one main cluster, while the second cluster contained both Rahmani and Ossimi breeds. The used molecular markers were able to discriminate among evaluated sheep and displayed that Farafra breed more closely related to Ossimi than Rahmani breed.