Lack of genetic differentiation of Milkfish, Chanos chanos (Forsskål, 1775) revealed by mitochondrial ATPase 6/8 genes.

Abstract

The milkfish, Chanos chanos, is a commercially important cultured species which is distributed throughout south and southeast Asian countries. Captive breeding and seed production techniques have been standardized recently in India and there is a need for analyzing its population structure along the Indian coast. A total of 80 samples from four different locations across the Indian coast were analyzed by using ATPase 6/8 genes. Analysis revealed the existence of 25 haplotypes across populations with the haplotype diversity in the range of 0.5684–0.8053 and the nucleotide diversity varied from 0.001838 to 0.002519. The variation within and among populations accounted for 97.43% and 2.75%, respectively. The observed FST values were found to be non-significant (p > 0.05). Results from this study indicated that there is lack of genetic divergence between the populations of milkfish along the Indian coast.