Genetic Assessment of Some Pheasant Species from Dhodial Pheasantry Mansehra, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

The present research was carried out to distinguish three species of pheasants at molecular level. Fourteen RAPD Primers were used over the nine samples of three pheasant species. On average 3.35 alleles were amplified and the average genetic distance estimated was 7%-63%. Nine samples of three species were clustered into two groups using dendrogram. Group A comprised of samples of Lady Amherst (Chrysolophus amherstiae) and Golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus) while group B comprised of Yellow Golden (Chrysolophus pictus mut. luteus). It is concluded that the Lady Amherst and Yellow Golden are most distantly related, so the crossing of these two species is recommended for creating maximum genetic diversity.