The Santa Inês breed stands out in meat sheep production in Brazil. However, this breed is under risk to lose important traits, especially due to pedigree errors and uncontrolled mating. The use of suitable molecular markers can help in the efficient parentage assignment and kinship analysis. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the power of different numbers of microsatellite markers in comparison to a genome-wide SNP array in kinship estimation in Santa Inês sheep flocks. Blood samples from 257 animals raised in six flocks located in the Mid-North sub-region of Brazil were used for DNA extraction. The microsatellite data were obtained using four panels with different numbers of loci (10, 12, 15, and 19). The panel OvineSNP50 BeadChip (Illumina Inc.) was used for genotyping the animals with SNP data, which were used to calculate the genomic relationship matrix (G). The COANCESTRY program was used to propose the best kinship estimator among seven that were tested. The R package RELATED was used to obtain kinship estimates. The kinships obtained using SNPs and microsatellites were compared using descriptive analysis and Pearson correlation. It was possible to estimate relatedness between full siblings, half siblings, parent-offspring, and unrelated animals using the four microsatellite panels. However, panels containing less than 15 markers had lower efficiency. Most of the pairs of individuals were unrelated or half sibs. In the six flocks, several pairs of individuals showed some degree of relatedness. This indicates that a great number of related individuals have mated. Our results demonstrated that kinships estimated using microsatellite panels were highly correlated to those obtained using the SNP panel, with correlations above 0.89. Thus, a low number of microsatellite markers estimates kinship in Santa Inês sheep with similar efficiency to a genome-wide SNP panel.

SantaInês品种在巴西的肉羊生产中脱颖而出。但是，该品种有丧失重要特征的风险，特别是由于系谱错误和交配不受控制。使用合适的分子标记可以帮助进行有效的亲子鉴定和亲属关系分析。在本研究中，我们旨在评估不同数目的微卫星标记物与全基因组SNP阵列相比，在圣塔因纳斯羊群的亲缘关系估计中的作用。来自位于巴西中北部分区的六只鸡群中饲养的257只动物的血样被用于DNA提取。使用四个具有不同位点数（10、12、15和19）的面板获得了微卫星数据。OvineSNP50 BeadChip（Illumina Inc.）小组用于通过SNP数据对动物进行基因分型，G）。使用COANCESTRY程序来建议七个被测者中最好的亲属关系估计量。R包RELATED用于获得亲属关系估计。使用描述性分析和皮尔森相关性比较使用单核苷酸多态性和微卫星获得的亲属关系。可以使用四个微卫星面板来评估同胞，同胞，亲子和后代动物之间的相关性。但是，包含少于15个标记的面板效率较低。大多数人对是无关的或同胞半。在这六个群中，几对个体表现出一定程度的相关性。这表明有很多相关的人已经交配。我们的结果表明，使用微卫星面板估计的亲属关系与使用SNP面板获得的亲属关系高度相关，相关性高于0.89。因此，少量的微卫星标记可以以与全基因组SNP面板相似的效率来估计圣塔因尼斯绵羊的亲属关系。