Multilocus Genotyping to Study Population Structure in Three Buffalo Populations of India

Three buffalo populations viz. Bhadawari, Tarai and local buffaloes of Kerala were genotyped using 24 heterologous polymorphic microsatellite loci. A total of 140 alleles were observed with an average observed heterozygosity of 0.63. All the loci were neutral and 18 out of the 24 loci were in Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium. The $F_{IS}$ values (estimate of inbreeding) for 16 loci in all the three populations were negative. This indicated lack of population structure in the three populations. The effective number of immigrants was 5.88 per generation between the Tarai and Bhadawari populations which was quite high suggesting substantial gene flow. The genetic distances revealed closeness between the Tarai and Bhadawari populations which was expected from geographical contiguity. The FST values were not significantly different from zero showing no population differentiation. The Correspondence Analysis based on the allelic frequency data clustered the majority of the Tarai and Bhadawari individuals as an admixture.