Assessment of the population structure and genetic diversity of Denizli chicken subpopulations using SSR markers

The aim of this study was to characterise the genetic diversity, genetic relationship and population structure within local Turkish Denizli chicken subpopulations in rural areas using 19 microsatellite markers. To assess the uniqueness and relations of the Denizli subpopulations we used six local Italian chicken breeds’ samples, which were genotyped in the same laboratory with the same molecular markers. In total, 105 alleles were found across 19 microsatellite loci with a mean number of 5.53 alleles per locus. Considering all subpopulations and loci, genetic differentiation based on global FST was 0.030 (p