Microsatellite DNA Analysis of Giant Freshwater Prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) from India

Giant freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii), a commercially important crustacean species, is widely distributed across the Indo-Pacific region. Genetic diversity of this species from five different rivers (Krishna, Mahanadi, Hooghly, Narmada and Kalu) of India was investigated using 5 polymorphic microsatellite loci. The number of alleles across loci varied from 4 to 9. The mean expected and observed heterozygosity at all loci was 0.8359 and 0.5747 respectively. Most of the loci deviated significantly from Hardy-Weinberg expectations across all the populations. Pairwise FST estimates (0.0420 to 0.0841) revealed a significant genetic structure among M. rosenbergii populations of Indian rivers. The highest (0.5140) genetic distance was observed between Krishna and Kalu populations. All five wild populations exhibited significant variation across all five microsatellite loci. The results revealed in the study will be useful for breeding programs and conservation management of this species