Phenotypic, biometric and genetic characterization of Bundelkhandi goats

Abstract

Bundelkhandi goats are found in Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The morphological features are jet black coat color, long legs, narrow face, roman type nose, long hair on body, black eyelids and muzzle, long curly and pendulous ears and bushy tail. The overall average recorded for body length, height at withers, chest girth, paunch girth, face length, horn length, ear length, tail length and body weights in bundelkhandi goats managed under any system were recorded. The males reared at farm exhibited better growth than those of field but female goats reared under two different management systems do not show significant difference in their growth. Genetic diversity was analysed in randomly selected unrelated 50 goats using FAO recommended 25 microsatellite markers. The observed number of allele ranged from 2 to 20 with an overall mean of 11.08 and the effective average number of allele was 4.96. The PIC value ranged between 0.41 to 0.92 and the highest value of the observed heterozygosity was 0.94 and the lowest was 0.06 and the expected heterozygosity was 0.73 to 0.89 respectively. The bottleneck analysis revealed the absence of any bottleneck in Bundelkhandi goat in recent past.