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The aim of this study was to investigate the maternal genealogical pattern of chicken breeds sampled in Europe. Sequence polymorphisms of 1256 chickens of the hypervariable region (D-loop) of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) were used. Median-joining networks were constructed to establish evolutionary relationships among mtDNA haplotypes of chickens, which included a wide range of breeds with different origin and history. Chicken breeds which have had their roots in Europe for more than 3000 years were categorized by their founding regions, encompassing Mediterranean type, East European type and Northwest European type. Breeds which were introduced to Europe from Asia since the mid-19th century were classified as Asian type, and breeds based on crossbreeding between Asian breeds and European breeds were classified as Intermediate type. The last group, Game birds, included fighting birds from Asia. The classification of mtDNA haplotypes was based on Liu et al.'s (2006) nomenclature. Haplogroup E was the predominant clade among the European chicken breeds. The results showed, on average, the highest number of haplotypes, highest haplotype diversity, and highest nucleotide diversity for Asian type breeds, followed by Intermediate type chickens. East European and Northwest European breeds had lower haplotype and nucleotide diversity compared to Mediterranean, Intermediate, Game and Asian type breeds. Results of our study support earlier findings that chicken breeds sampled in Europe have their roots in the Indian subcontinent and East Asia. This is consistent with historical and archaeological evidence of chicken migration routes to Europe.

Genetic diversity and population structure of 113 chicken populations from Africa, Asia and Europe were studied using 29 microsatellite markers. Among these, three populations of wild chickens and nine commercial purebreds were used as reference populations for comparison. Compared to commercial lines and chickens sampled from the European region, high mean numbers of alleles and a high degree of heterozygosity were found in Asian and African chickens as well as in Red Junglefowl. Population differentiation (FST ) was higher among European breeds and commercial lines than among African, Asian and Red Junglefowl populations. Neighbour-Net genetic clustering and structure analysis revealed two main groups of Asian and north-west European breeds, whereas African populations overlap with other breeds from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean region. Broilers and brown egg layers were situated between the Asian and north-west European clusters. structure analysis confirmed a lower degree of population stratification in African and Asian chickens than in European breeds. High genetic differentiation and low genetic contributions to global diversity have been observed for single European breeds. Populations with low genetic variability have also shown a low genetic contribution to a core set of diversity in attaining maximum genetic variation present from the total populations. This may indicate that conservation measures in Europe should pay special attention to preserving as many single chicken breeds as possible to maintain maximum genetic diversity given that higher genetic variations come from differentiation between breeds.