Small Ruminant Research 113 (2013) 62–65 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Small Ruminant Research jou rnal h om epa ge: www.elsevier.com/locate/smallrumres Technical note Parentage verification of Valle del Belice dairy sheep using multiplex microsatellite panel A.J.M. Rosa a , M.T. Sardina b,∗ , S. Mastrangelo b , M. Tolone b , B. Portolano b a EMBRAPA Cerrados Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply, Br 020, km 18 – Cx.p. 08223, 73310-970 Planaltina, DF, Brazil b Dipartimento Scienze Agrarie e Forestali, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Parco d’Orleans, 90128 Palermo, Italy a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 13 July 2012 Received in revised form 26 March 2013 Accepted 28 March 2013 Available online 1 May 2013 Keywords: Valle del Belice dairy sheep Microsatellites Multiplex Parentage test a b s t r a c t The aim of this work was to develop and evaluate a PCR based microsatellite markers multiplex system for parentage verification of Sicilian Valle del Belice dairy sheep. A total of 85 samples of blood and hair were collected and genotyped for 24 microsatellite markers in multiplex electrophoresis runs. A total of 269 alleles were detected across the 24 loci investigated. The PIC considering all loci was equal to 0.736, showing that this microsatellite panel was very polymorphic and highly informative. A parentage test was performed on 64 families generated with multiple sires. Results indicated 20.3% and 29.7% misidentification rates for females and males, respectively. In 8 cases, out of 13 maternal exclusions, the real mother was identified among other females within the flock. The observed misidentification rates indicated the necessity of keeping more efficient collection of genealogical records, in order to properly control inbreeding or implement a breeding program. The parentage test presented here could be a helpful tool on verifying or even reconstructing the current pedigree data of Valle del Belice dairy sheep breed. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Animal breeding programs use mixed models to pre- dict breeding values for economically important traits and select seedstock animals. The methodology of Henderson (1988) uses a relationship matrix of the animals to solve the mixed model generating additive genetic values with BLUP properties. Therefore, paternity errors have a detrimental effect on population genetic parameters estimation and breeding value prediction (Van Vleck, 1970; Lee and Pollak, 1997). Paternity errors can reach up to 20% of animals registered in various countries (Ron et al., 1996), drastically reducing the genetic gain, beside impacting inbreeding control. The Valle del Belice ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 091 23896069; fax: +39 091 23860814. E-mail address: mariateresa.sardina@unipa.it (M.T. Sardina). is the most appreciated sheep breed reared in Sicily for milk production, and nowadays about 215,000 animals are enrolled in the herd book belonging to approximately 1250 flocks (ASSONAPA, 2012). In the Sicilian farming system, natural mating is the most common practice. Moreover, the exchange of rams among flocks is quite unusual and the reproductive management is characterized by unrecorded mating with multiple sires. Therefore, there is a need to generate reliable pedigree for inbreeding control beside engendering a breeding program. For pedigree reconstruc- tion, given the demand of heterozygosity, microsatellite is the most commonly used markers characterized by higher number of alleles than other neutral markers (e.g. Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, SNPs). Microsatellite based parentage tests for relationship verification or assignment in case of unrecorded mating or multiple sires have been developed for many species, including dogs (De Nise et al., 2004), cats (Lipinski et al., 2007), horses (Tozaki et al., 2001), cattle (Van Eenennaam et al., 2007), goats and sheep 0921-4488/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.smallrumres.2013.03.021