Genetic Similarity Assessment among Selected Naked Oat Cultivars and Breeding Lines Using ISSR Markers

Abstract

Naked oat refers to a variety of Avena sativa with lemma and palea separating from the grains. Its spikelets are multiflorous and morphologically different from the husked oat. Problems with preharvest sprouting, threshability, rancidity, a wide range of kernel sizes, as well as its relatively low tolerance to limited soil water content, are its main drawbacks. Nevertheless it could be an alternative to a conventional oat. Unfortunately, its genetic variation is still poorly recognized.  In the given study a set of 26 naked oat cultivars and lines were analyzed with 25 inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) primers that amplified as many as 429 DNA fragments among which 204 were polymorphic. The average number of markers amplified per primer pair and polymorphism information content (PIC) value equaled to eight and 0.23, respectively. Forty four unique PCR products were identified for different genotypes. While Unweighted Pair-Group Method with Arithmetic Mean failed to distinguish the materials into main clusters it demonstrated that cultivars ‘Akt’, ‘Polar’, ‘Cacko’, ‘Siwek’, ‘Nagus’ and most of the DC lines were within a single group. Moreover, the cultivars that were closely related based on their breeding pedigree (related to ‘Akt’) were close to each other. Principal Coordinate Analysis explained 54.1% of variance and was in good agreement with the UPGMA. ISSR markers could be used for the evaluation of genetic similarity of cultivars and lines as well as the differentiation of individual genotypes. This study demonstrated that the available A. sativa naked type genetic pool is relatively wide and have the potential for further breeding progress.