The Yeonsan Ogye (YO) chicken is a natural heritage of Korea, characterized by black feathers, skin, bones, eyes, and comb. The purebred of YO population has been reared under the natural mating system with no systematic selection and breeding plan. The purpose of this study was to identify the genetic diversity and find the optimal number of population sub-division using 12 polymorphic microsatellite (MS) markers to construct a pedigree-based breeding plan for the YO population. A total of 509 YO birds were used for this study. Genetic diversity and population structure analysis were conducted based on the MS marker genotype information. The overall average polymorphic information content value and expected heterozygosity of the population were 0.586, and 0.642, respectively. The K-mean cluster analysis based on the genetic distance result confirmed that the current YO population can be divided into three ancestry groups. Individuals in each group were evaluated based on their genetic distance to identify the potential candidates for a future breeding plan. This study concludes that a future breeding plan with known pedigree information of selected founder animals, which holds high genetic diversity, could be the best strategy to ensure the conservation of the Korean YO chicken population.
