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Indonesian native chickens are considered an important genetic resource, particularly with respect to their excellent traits for meat and egg production. However, few molecular genetic studies of these native chickens have been conducted. We analyzed the genetic diversity and differentiation of 4 populations of Indonesian native chickens: Black Kedu (BK), Kedu (KD), Kampung (LOC), and Arab (AR). Blood samples from 188 individuals were collected in central and western Java. Genomic DNA was genotyped using 98 autosomal SNP markers, of which 87 were found to be polymorphic. The proportion of polymorphic loci and the average heterozygosity of each population were in the range of 0.765 to 0.878 and 0.224 to 0.263, respectively. The 4 populations of Indonesian chickens appeared to be derived from 3 genetic populations (K = 3): maximum likelihood clustering showed that the BK variety and AR breed were each assigned to a distinct cluster, whereas the LOC ecotype and KD variety were admixed populations with similar proportions of membership. Principal components analysis revealed that eigenvector 1 separated BK and AR from the other 2 populations. Neighbor-joining trees constructed from pairwise distance matrix (FST) estimates, for individuals and between populations, corroborated that the LOC ecotype and KD variety were related closely, whereas the BK variety and AR breed diverged at greater distances. These results also confirmed the usefulness of SNP markers for the study of genetic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]