COMPARISON OF MALAGASY ZEBU POPULATIONS U SING GENETIC DISTANCES

A total of 1 103 Malagasy cattle of both sexes from 3 sampling regions (northwest, southwest and centre) over a distance of 800 km have been examined for visible traits and 526 blood samples have been analyzed. The aim was to compare the polymorphism of genes with visible effect, blood group loci and lactoprotein loci for 5 subpopulations represent ative of the whole island. The results show that the 2 large zones of birth have very similar visible genetic variability (Nei's diversity i ndex = 0.40) which indicates that everywhere the population is of trad itional type. The high frequencies of the A variant (0.70) of the kapp a-Cn locus, the B variant (0.68) of the beta-Lg locus as well as the m orphology of the chromosome Y (acrocentric) confirm that this Zebu pop ulation is of the true Zebu type. The analysis shows that the 5 subpop ulations seem to be genetically close. This confirms the homogeneity a lready described in a previous study of biometrical distances.