Abstract: Five local sheep breeds of Tengchong (TC), Zhaotong sheep (ZS), Diqing (DQ), Ninglang (NL) and Wugu (WG) in Yunnan were analyzed through the microsatellite DNA marker technology. The genetic variability within breeds and genetic relationship among breeds, the genetic heterozygosity (H), polymorphism information content (PIC), coefficient of gene differentiation and genetic distance etc had been evaluated. The results showed that the heterozygosity of five sheep breeds were 0.2894 to 0.3349, this indicated that genetic variability was low in analyzed sheep. The PIC value was high, beyond 0.5, it indicated the five local sheep breeds in Yunnan had more abundant genetic diversity. The gene flow had been analyzed, there were bigger gene flow within sheep breeds except for WG sheep. The D_coa genetic distance and Ds genetic distance had been analyzed by using POPGENE software, and drawed the dendrograms with the above genetic distance, the genetic distance between WG sheep and other sheep were far, the close were between Diqing sheep and Ninglang sheep.

Key words: Yunnan; sheep; microsatellite; genetic diversity