1 Insights into the genetic diversity of indigenous goats and their 2 conservation priorities 3 Gang Liu1¶, Qianjun Zhao2¶, Feizhou Sun1, Xu Han1, Junjin Zhao1, Haiyong Feng1, Kejun 4 Wang3*, Jian Lu1*, Chousheng Liu1* 5 6 *Corresponding author: 7 Kejun Wang 8 Tel: +86-0317-55369208, Fax: +86-0317-55369208, E-mail:
[email protected] 9 Jian Lu 10 Tel:+86-10-62817223, Fax:+86-10-62894803, E-mail:
[email protected]; 11 Chousheng Liu 12 Tel:+86-10-62817223, Fax:+86-10-62894803, E-mail:
[email protected]; 13
[email protected]. 14 ¶ These authors contributed equally to this work. 15 Accepted Article 16 1 National Center for Preservation and Utilization of Animal Genetic Resources, National 17 Animal Husbandry Service, Beijing 100193, People’s Republic of China 18 2 Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, 19 People’s Republic of China 20 3College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengz 21 hou 450002, People’s Republic of China 1 22 Title: Insights into the genetic diversity of indigenous goats and their conservation priorities 23 ABSTRACT 24 Objective: An experiment was conducted to evaluate genetic diversity of 26 Chinese indigenous goats 25 by 30 microsatellite markers, and then to define conservation priorities to set up the protection 26 programs according to the weight given to within- and between-breed genetic diversity. 27 Methods: Twenty-six representative populations of Chinese indigenous goats, 1351 total, were 28 sampled from different geographic regions of China. Within-breed genetic diversity and marker 29 polymorphism were estimated calculating the mean number of alleles (MNA), observed 30 heterozygosities (HO), expected heterozygosities (He), fixation index (FIS), effective number of alleles 31 (NE) and allelic richness (Rt).