Abstract
Arbi is one of the main local goat breeds in Tunisia, representing an important economic resource in arid and hot areas where cattle and sheep cannot thrive successfully. In the current work, we have characterized the mitochondrial diversity of 26 Arbi goats by partially sequencing the mitochondrial D-loop region. These sequences plus 10 retrieved from GenBank were analyzed with the DnaSP v.5.10.1, evidencing the existence of 12 different haplotypes. Nucleotide and haplotype diversities were 0.02 and 0.96. Moreover, median-joining network analysis showed that all D-loop sequences from Arbi goats correspond to haplogroup A and that in general they do not cluster with sequences from other goat breeds. The high diversity that has been observed in North African goats is compatible with the maritime diffusion of the Neolithic package 10,000–7000 YBP. Moreover, there are evidences that local Tunisian breeds have been extensively crossed with highly productive transboundary breeds in order to improve meat and milk yields. These uncontrolled crossing practices may lead to the loss of alleles that play key roles in the adaptation of Tunisian local breeds to a harsh environment.
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Funding
This research was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Tunisia. We also acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the grant AGL2016-76108-R and the “Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D” 2016–2019 (SEV‐2015‐0533). This research was also supported by the CERCA Programme of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
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MA conceived and designed the experiments, YR and AN performed the experiments.YR analyzed the data. YR, MA wrote the paper. All authors read and critically revised the manuscript.
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Ressaissi, Y., Amills, M., Noce, A. et al. Characterizing the Mitochondrial Diversity of Arbi Goats from Tunisia. Biochem Genet 59, 1225–1232 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10528-021-10058-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10528-021-10058-7