Molecular characterization of genetic diversity in some durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) in Palestine

Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was conducted to estimate the genetic diversity and relatedness among 10 wheat cultivars and landraces. Five out of 70 decamer random primers showed distinctly polymorphic bands when used to amplify genomic DNA. The primers yielded a total of 157 RAPD markers of which 150 were considered as polymorphic. Each primer produced 18 to 37 polymorphic bands with an average of 30 markers per primer. DNA fragments size ranged from 350 to 1910 bp. The mean similarity indices ranged from 0.05 to 0.68 with an average of 0.29. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrogram based on Jaccard genetic similarity index, grouped the 10 landraces and cultivars into four main clusters. Despite the clustering of most landraces in the same cluster, high genetic variation was observed within cluster-I in which the genetic distance ranged from 73% between Hiteyah8 and White Dibeyah to 32% between Black Hiteyah and Yellow Hiteyah. The result of this study confirms high genetic diversity within these cultivars and landraces, and therefore, underlined the significant values of these cultivars and landraces as gene pool for durum wheat genetic improvement. Thus, RAPD offer a potentially simple, rapid and reliable method to evaluate genetic variation and relatedness among ten wheat landraces and cultivars.