Assessment of genetic diversity among three different species of Aegilops sp. using CBDP, SCoT and ISSR markers

The genus of Aegilops is one of the most important wild relatives of wheat, and different species of this genus have a wide distribution in Middle East and West Asia. Knowledge about the genetic diversity of Aegilops species provides useful information which can be exploited for breeding programs of wheat. In this study, genetic diversity of 60 Agilops accessions from three different species were investigated using three different DNA markers. CBDP, SCoT and ISSR primers amplified 130, 135 and 152 polymorphic fragments respectively. The average of polymorphism information content (PIC) for CBDP, SCoT and ISSR primers were 0.37, 0.34 and 0.39 respectively indicated the efficiency and usefulness of the used primers. The neighbor-joining (NJ) based clustering using marker data, classified all 60 accessions into three main groups and the investigated accessions were clustered based on the genetic structure. The results of analysis of molecular variance based on CBDP, ISSR and SCoT data showed that the variance among populations covered 66%, 45% and 42% of total variation respectively. Besides, among all three species, Ae. triuncialis showed the maximum number of private allels indicating its unique genetic background. Our results revealed high levels of genetic diversity within all three species, showing high potential of studied germplasm for using in breeding programs. Further, our findings indicated that all three marker systems were useful techniques for evaluation of genetic diversity, however, CBDP and SCoT markers which are generated from the functional regions of the genomes, would be more useful for evaluation of genetic diversity than random or semi random PCR based markers.