Genetic Diversity of Bread Wheat Genotypes (Triticum Aestivum L.) Revealed by Agromorphological Characteristics and Microsatellite SSR Markers

Abstract

The present study was conducted to understand the genetic diversity of bread wheat's that grown in Algeria, and to evaluate polymorphism information content (PIC) of some wheat SSR primers. It was undertaken to examine the genetic diversity of ten bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes, using 16 microsatellite primer pairs (SSRs). SSR bands were scored across all genotypes, for presence (1) or absence (0) and transformed into 0/1 binary matrix. A pair-wise similarity matrix was generated with the software NTSYS. The Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) ranged from 0.23 to 0.70 respectively for the primer WMC 21 and WMC 50 with an average of 0.49 and 0.52 per primer pair. The similarity coefficient between cultivars ranged from 0.28 and 0.91 with an average of 0.60. Most of the genotypes showed a high degree of genetic similarity. The highest genetic distance value of 0.91 has been scored between Kauz/Pastor/Fiscal and Prl/2*Pastor and between Kauz/Pastor/Fiscal and Wbll1*2/Brambling. The lowest genetic distance value of 0.28 has been scored between Arz and Babax/Lr42//Babax*2/3/Kukuna. Cluster analysis based on microsatellite allelic diversity discriminated the varieties into different clusters. Ten wheat cultivars were grouped in three clusters. The present study also indicates that microsatellite markers permit the fast and high throughout fingerprinting of accessions from a varieties collection in order to assess genetic diversity.