Drought tolerance and genetic diversity among selected wheat cultivars

Abstract EN

The study was carried out for genetic diversity evaluation among fifteen bread wheat cultivars for drought tolerance locally cultivated in Iraq-Kurdistan Region using a valuable diagnostic tool Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique.

The genotypes revealed different levels of polymorphism for the loci detected using fifteen RAPD primers; only ten primers related to drought due to band exhibition.

They generate a total of 257 bands, amplified band sizes ranged between (137 – 1875) bp with 95.72% polymorphism.

The lowest bands produced by OPF-6 (5 bands), while OPD-8 generates 64 bands as a high score.

The genetic distance was calculated using un-weighted pair group of arithmetic means (UPGMA).

The cluster analysis was performed and the resulted dendrogram classified the 15 wheat genotypes into two main clusters with Jaccard’s similarity coefficient ranging between (0.29 - 0.85).

The first group includes Rizgary, Rabeaa, Azady, Adena, Abu-xreb and Sham-6, while the second group consists of nine wheat genotypes; Aras, Tammuz-2, Floakwa, Abehade, Sabeer beg, Ebaa-95, Panda, Ebba-99 and Ezz.

The highest similarity 0.85 was found between Tmmuz-2 and Aras and the lowest 0.29 was recorded between Ebba-99 and Sham-6.

Unique DNA fragments of different sizes were detected in a particular cultivar but not in the others.

Such fragments could be used as markers for their respective cultivars.

RAPD-PCR technique showed considerable potential for estimating genetic diversity among studied wheat cultivars.

This study is important for the development of drought tolerant wheat cultivars with wider and diverse genetic background to achieve improved wheat productivity.