Abstract
In recent world-wide studies on the autosomal genetic diversity of goats, Asian goats were represented only by Southwest Asian, Pakistani and Chinese breeds. We have collected 55 K genome-wide SNP genotypes for 12 South/Southeast Asian and 2 central Asian goat populations, and inferred the origin and evolutionary history of Asian goats based on the population genomic analyses. Breed relationships, diversity clines, and coancestry patterns revealed two distinct migration routes separated by the Himalayan mountains: a northern route (Kazakhstan–Mongolia–Xinjiang) and a southern route (Bangladesh–Indochina). These routes tentatively parallel major human migration events across Eurasia. The migrations of goats converge into the Indochina goat populations, which then became the ancestors of the Philippine and Indonesian goats. Previous data on Y-chromosomal haplogroups indicate within the first group a separate migration of cashmere goats in eastern and northern China. Similarly, the southern route has been followed by two subsequent waves of goats, the first carrying the mitochondrial B haplogroup and in eastern Indochina associated with that Katjang type, and a later wave carrying exclusively the mitochondrial A haplogroup and associated in western Indochina with the Indian lop-eared trait with a roman convex facial profile. Haplogroup B in Indochina and Indonesia seems to be associated with tropical adaptation, whereas the Y1AB haplotype in northern China occurs at high frequency in cashmere goats, suggesting potential adaptation to arid environments. Together, these patterns point to a complex demographic history and diverse adaptive trajectories in Asian goats.
Data availability
The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available in the Figshare repository, (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29035598). The code developed for the Reduced Representation Admixture Analysis (RRAA) and the datasets used in this study are available at the following repository: https://github.com/wujiaqi06/RRAA.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 25304038 and 17H04643, 19K22367 and 21KK0122. I wish to thank The Society for Researches on Native Livestock for helping field research work. The authors would like to explain special thanks the late Dr. K. Nozawa for providing long-standing observations of goat morphological distribution in East Asia, related to Fig. S1.
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H.M., T.Y. and J.A.L conceived and designed the experiments and supervised the project. R.M., K.I., Y.N., R.T., M.M., A., E.K., F.K. and S.S. performed the genetic analyses. J.W., R.M., T.Y., A.A. and H.M. performed the phylogenetic analyses. K.N., Y.T., M.K.S., M.O.F., J.S.M., M.B., P.K., T.D., M.I.A.D. and S.R.A.B. conducted the field investigation and collected the samples. T.Y., J.A.L. and H.M. wrote the manuscript. All of the authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript. Lenstra, JA played a fundamental role in this paper, including defining the research direction, structuring the paper, and developing the RRAA method.
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This study is reported in accordance with ARRIVE guidelines (https:// arriv eguid elines. org). All experiments were carried out according to the Kobe University Animal Experimentation Regulations, and all protocols were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Kobe University and by Association for the Promotion of Research Integrity (Tokyo, Japan) (Approval Number: AP0000436777). All blood samples collections were approved by animal owners with signed informed consent.
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Yonezawa, T., Wu, J., Masuko, R. et al. Genome-wide variation reveal that goats were introduced into Asia via multiple migrations.
Sci Rep (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-29204-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-29204-x
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