Genetic Diversity in Turkish Durum Wheat Landraces

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine genetic diversity of durum wheat (T.durum L.,) landraces collected from various regions of Turkey by means of RAPD markers. In addition to this, some morphological, pathological and technological traits were also investigated in this study. In this research, 100 durum wheat lines selected from 10 land races and 3 cultivars were screened by using ten decamer of 15 more polymorphic and reputable RAPD markers selected from 300 RAPD primers. Totally, 92 loci were determined based on RAPD data. 80 of these loci were polymorphic while the others were monomorphic. Estimated genetic diversity parameters investigated in this research such as mean effective allele numbers, observed heterozygote, proportion of polymorphic loci and gene diversity were generally higher in land races than those of the cultivars. Effective allele numbers, observed heterozygoty, proportion of polymorphic loci and gene diversity were 1.40, 0.24, 89.96 and 0.25, respectively. Genetic distance of the material which was calculated based on RAPD data changed between 0.74 and 0.99. Large variation observed in morphological (plant height, spike length, grain number per spike, biological yield, and resistance to lodging, etc.), pathological (stripe and leaf rusts), technologic traits (1000 kernel weight, hectoliter weight, protein ratio, SDS sedimentation etc.) and RAPD markers within and among land races population suggests that these germplasm can be used in improving new durum cultivars with higher yield, resistance to rusts and desirable quality traits