Relationships among tetraploid wheat (Triticum turgidumL.) landrace populations revealed by isozyme markers and agronomic traits

✍ Scribed by Seifu Tsegaye; Tesfaye Tesemma; Getachew Belay

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 579 KB
• Volume: 93
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0040-5752
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00417954

✦ Synopsis

Diversity and relationships among ten tetraploid wheat landrace populations, collected from different localities in the central highlands of Ethiopia, were studied using isozyme markers and agronomic traits. This type of analysis in crop species is fundamental for designing optimal germ plasm collection, management practices and for developing an index for parental selection. The populations differed in allelic frequencies. Gene-diversity estimates showed that the populations encompass an appreciable amount of variation. However, differentiation between them was low, as was also confirmed by the presence of gene flow. Much of the diversity (85%), was attributable to the within-population level. The genetic distances were mostly small with the exception of those between a few pairs of populations. Thus, the relationships discerned among the populations were more of a similarity nature which could be ascribed to sharing a common ancestral population and/or adaptation to similar climatic conditions. The pattern of genetic divergence appeared to be independent of geographic distance. Considerable divergence in the agronomic traits was observed for certain populations. Cluster analyses of the isozyme and agronomic data produced different patterns and memberships of groupings. This lack of agreement could be ascribed to the different forces of evolution acting on isozyme markers and agronomic traits since agronomic traits, are the prime target of artificial selection. The clustering based on agronomic traits resulted in grouping together populations Communicated by R M. A. Tigerstedt Seifu Tsegaye (~)