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Presents information on a study which discussed genetic markers and their application in livestock breeding in South Africa. Description of the restricted fragment length polymorphism technique; Components of microsatellites; Genome mapping efforts.

Ascaridia galli is one of the most common nematode affecting chickens. This study characterized A . galli parasites collected from South African village chickens of Limpopo ( n = 18) and KwaZulu-Natal ( n = 22) provinces using the 510 bp sequences of cytochrome C oxidase subunit 1 gene of the mitochondrial DNA. Fourteen and 12 polymorphic sites were observed for Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal sequences, respectively. Six haplotypes were observed in total. Haplotype diversity was high and ranged from 0.749 for Limpopo province to 0.758 for KwaZulu-Natal province isolates. There was no genetic differentiation between A . galli from Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. The six South African haplotypes were unique compared to those published in the GeneBank sampled from Hy-line chickens raised under organic farming in Denmark. The utility of cytochrome C oxidase subunit 1 gene as a potential genetic marker for studying A . galli in village chicken populations is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]