Sheep in Ethiopia are adapted to a wide range of environments, including extreme habitats. Elucidating their genetic diversity is critical for improving breeding strategies and mapping quantitative trait loci associated with productivity. To this end, the present study investigated the genetic diversity and population structure of five Ethiopian sheep populations exhibiting distinct phenotypes and sampled from distinct production environments, including arid lowlands and highlands. To investigate the genetic relationships in greater detail and infer population structure of Ethiopian sheep breeds at the continental and global levels, we analyzed genotypic data of selected sheep breeds from the Ovine SNP50K HapMap dataset. All Ethiopian sheep samples were genotyped with Ovine Infinium HD SNP BeadChip (600K). Mean genetic diversity ranged from 0.29 in Arsi-Bale to 0.32 in Menz sheep, while estimates of genetic differentiation among populations ranged from 0.02 to 0.07, indicating low to moderate differentiation. An analysis of molecular variance revealed that 94.62 and 5.38% of the genetic variation was attributable to differences within and among populations, respectively. Our population structure analysis revealed clustering of five Ethiopian sheep populations according to tail phenotype and geographic origin—i.e., short fat-tailed (very cool high-altitude), long fat-tailed (mid to high-altitude), and fat-rumped (arid low-altitude), with clear evidence of admixture between long fat-tailed populations. North African sheep breeds showed higher levels of within-breed diversity, but were less differentiated than breeds from Eastern and Southern Africa. When African breeds were grouped according to geographic origin (North, South, and East), statistically significant differences were detected among groups (regions). A comparison of population structure between Ethiopian and global sheep breeds showed that fat-tailed breeds from Eastern and Southern Africa clustered together, suggesting that these breeds were introduced to the African continent via the Horn and migrated further south.

In total, 166 individuals from five indigenous Ethiopian cattle populations – Ambo (n = 27), Borana (n = 35), Arsi (n = 30), Horro (n = 36), and Danakil (n = 38) – were genotyped for 8773 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers to assess genetic diversity, population structure, and relationships. As a representative of taurine breeds, Hanwoo cattle (n = 40) were also included in the study for reference. Among Ethiopian cattle populations, the proportion of SNPs with minor allele frequencies (MAFs) ≥0.05 ranged from 81.63% in Borana to 85.30% in Ambo, with a mean of 83.96% across all populations. The Hanwoo breed showed the highest proportion of polymorphism, with MAFs ≥0.05, accounting for 95.21% of total SNPs. The mean expected heterozygosity varied from 0.370 in Danakil to 0.410 in Hanwoo. The mean genetic differentiation (F_ST; 1%) in Ethiopian cattle revealed that within individual variation accounted for approximately 99% of the total genetic variation. As expected, F_ST and Reynold genetic distance were greatest between Hanwoo and Ethiopian cattle populations, with average values of 17.62 and 18.50, respectively. The first and second principal components explained approximately 78.33% of the total variation and supported the clustering of the populations according to their historical origins. At K = 2 and 3, a considerable source of variation among cattle is the clustering of the populations into Hanwoo (taurine) and Ethiopian cattle populations. The low estimate of genetic differentiation (F_ST) among Ethiopian cattle populations indicated that differentiation among these populations is low, possibly owing to a common historical origin and high gene flow. Genetic distance, phylogenic tree, principal component analysis, and population structure analyses clearly differentiated the cattle population according to their historical origins, and confirmed that Ethiopian cattle populations are genetically distinct from the Hanwoo breed.

Knowledge about genetic diversity and population structure is useful for designing effective strategies to improve the production, management and conservation of farm animal genetic resources. Here, we present a comprehensive genome-wide analysis of genetic diversity, population structure and admixture based on 244 animals sampled from 10 cattle populations in Asia and Africa and genotyped for 69 903 autosomal single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) mainly derived from the indicine breed. Principal component analysis, STRUCTURE and distance analysis from high-density SNP data clearly revealed that the largest genetic difference occurred between the two domestic lineages (taurine and indicine), whereas Ethiopian cattle populations represent a mosaic of the humped zebu and taurine. Estimation of the genetic influence of zebu and taurine revealed that Ethiopian cattle were characterized by considerable levels of introgression from South Asian zebu, whereas Bangladeshi populations shared very low taurine ancestry. The relationships among Ethiopian cattle populations reflect their history of origin and admixture rather than phenotype-based distinctions. The high within-individual genetic variability observed in Ethiopian cattle represents an untapped opportunity for adaptation to changing environments and for implementation of within-breed genetic improvement schemes. Our results provide a basis for future applications of genome-wide SNP data to exploit the unique genetic makeup of indigenous cattle breeds and to facilitate their improvement and conservation.