Morphological characterization and genetic analysis by using RAPD and ISSR markers of some olive cultivars grown in Egypt

Abstract

Olive (Olea europaea L.) is a major and economically important crop for the new reclamation land in Egypt. There are five common olive cultivars existed in Egypt with commercial names of: Cultivar 1 (Eggizi), Cultivar 2 (Chemlali), Cultivar 3 (Picual), Cultivar 4 (Kalamata) and Cultivar 5 (Tofahey). Classification or differentiation based on the morphological appearance was not accurate and need an expertise to differentiate between the cultivars or individuals in the field. For that reasons leaves samples were collected from different field in Egypt. The plant DNA was extracted and subjected to fingerprinting using two DNA marker methods; ISSR and RAPD-PCR. Five different ISSR primers were used to differentiate between the five cultivars but in case of RAPD-PCR only five primers were approached. The mean band number obtained with ISSR amplification ranged from 6 to 9 bands with each cultivar (per lane). On the other hand, RAPD-PCR bands number obtained by amplification was ranged between 4 to 6 bands. The data analysis revealed that both ISSR and RAPD-PCR succeed to classify the five examined cultivars into two clusters. Cultivar 1 was classified as a unique cluster with ISSR analysis whenever, cultivar 2 was classified as single cluster based on the RAPD-PCR analysis. The ISSR succeeded to differentiate between the five olive cultivars and the results revealed that the similarity between the examined cultivars ranged from 92 to 98%. The same observation was obtained in case of the RAPD-PCR. It can conclude that results obtained by both ISSR and RAPD techniques confirm each other. The highest leaf length /width ratio was that of Egzi however, the lowest was resulted from Chemlali. © IDOSI Publications, 2014.