Identification of IRAP markers associated with agro-morphological traits in oil seed sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) under normal and water limited conditions

Drought stress is one of the main environmental factors affecting the growth, yield and quality of agricultural products. Unfortunately, global climate change and mismanagement have led to the expansion of the arid and semi-arid lands of the world. Meanwhile, sunflower is one of the important oilseed plants relatively resistant to drought stress. The present study was conducted to identify molecular markers associated with genomic regions controlling agro-morphological traits in sunflower under drought stress. The associated markers are potentially useful for breeding programs and can accelerate the selection of drought tolerant genotypes. 100 sunflower genotypes were planted in a 10 ×10 simple lattice design with two replications in each one of normal and irrigation limited conditions for two consecutive years. Molecular profiles of the lines were prepared with 7 IRAP primer combinations. According to mlm, 12 and 10 markers showed significant relationships with the studied traits (P≥ 0.01) under normal and irrigation limited conditions, respectively. “61655” showed a significant relationship with oil percentage under both normal and irrigation limited conditions. The markers “616510” and “61655” and “CfCr1” showed a significant relationship with several traits under normal and irrigation limited conditions, respectively, that can be due to pleiotropic effects or linkage between genes controlling traits. Accordingly, “616510” marker related with genomic regions controlling yield under normal conditions and "CfCr1" marker related with genomic regions controlling yield components traits (head and stem diameter) under irrigation limited conditions, after validation, can be used for selection of optimal genotypes under these water treatment conditions.