Association of genetic markers with sex determination in Thai red tilapia

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to verify the polymorphism on sex-linked marker loci and to assess their associations with phenotypic sex characteristics in red tilapia. Four sex-linked genetic markers of Amh, SCAR4, SCAR5, and Oni3161 were genotyped in the Thai red tilapia population. The Amh marker was significantly associated with the phenotypic sex of red tilapia with an accuracy of 46.2%. No significant association of SCAR4, SCAR5, and Oni3161 marker polymorphisms with phenotypic sex characteristics was observed in this study. However, the combinations of these two, three, and four markers were increasingly associated with phenotypic sex characteristics for red tilapia with an accuracy of 62.8, 68.4, and 72.4%, respectively. These results indicate that these combined genetic markers were associated with the phenotypic sex of red tilapias. These findings confirmed the importance of these genetic markers as candidate markers for sex determination in the Thai red tilapia population.