Losses of biodiversity and species extinction are considered as global crises, which has initiated conservation efforts to protect species and reduce the extinction rate. Captive breeding is one of the ways to increase the populations of a species and to re-introduce them to the wild. Captive breeding projects are time consuming, costly and might fail due to genetic problems such as inbreeding. Therefore, genetic studies are prerequisites for such projects. The current study aimed to determine the taxonomic status and phylogenetic relationship of the sheep population in Chadegan recreation village to comprehend the origin and potential sites in the case of releasing animals to the wild and to assess the genetic diversity of the current population. DNA extraction from placental tissue samples from six individuals was performed using ammonium acetate method.PCR reactions were performed using specific cytochrome b primers and a fragment of 688 base pairs (bp) was amplified and sequenced. Available sequences of Iranian sheep populations were extracted from Genebank and used for phylogenetic reconstruction. Results showed that Iranian wild sheep could be divided into two Clades namely O.orientalis and O.vignei with posterior probability of 0.99 and 98.9% bootstrap support.Based on this Keywords : captive breeding, Chadegan, cytochrome b , genetic diversity, phylogeny, wild sheep.
