Parentage determination of mandarin fish (Siniperca chuatsi) based on microsatellite DNA markers

In this study, ten microsatellite loci were chosen to estimate the parentage of 260 progeny in five mandarin fish (Siniperca chuatsi) full-sib families. Simulation based on allele frequency date demonstrated the combined exclusion power would be over 97% if the number of loci was up to nine. Based on the information from these nine loci, 98% of progeny were unambiguously allocated to their putative parental pairs in the parentage analysis. The assignment success rate by the real data set was lower than that predicted by the simulations, with 94% of progeny assigned correctly. The discrepancies might be caused by a scoring error or allelic dropout caused by poor quality genomic DNA. Moreover, 69 progeny were selected randomly for the double-blind test, the result indicated that 95% of the progeny can be correctly assigned to their families. This study provided a microsatellite-based approach for parentage assignment in S. chuatsi, and that will be useful for investigation of genetic background and molecular marker-assisted selective breeding in this species.