Full Length Research Paper

Assessment of genetic diversity in rapeseed cultivars as revealed by RAPD and microsatellite markers

Mohammadi Moghaddam¹*, Seyed Abolgasem Mohammmadi¹, Nasser Mohebalipour¹, Mahmoud Toorchi¹, Saied Aharizad¹ and Farzad Javidfar²

¹Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.

²Seed and Plant Improvement Institute, Karaj, Iran.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: mmoghaddam@tabrizu.ac.ir. 

Tel.: 00984113392070. Fax: 00984113356003.

Accepted 13 April, 2009

   Abstract

Microsatellite and RAPD markers were used to detect the genetic variability among 32 rapeseed cultivars. RAPD analysis using 38 primers produced a total of 250 polymorphic bands and microsatellite assay by 10 primer pairs resulted in 143 alleles. A range of 0.60 to 0.91 was observed for polymorphic information content (PIC) of microsatellite markers. A marker related to the RAPD primer 430 was only revealed in the spring rapeseed cultivars. Na12-C01, a microsatellite marker amplifying two different genomic regions in the Brassica genome was also observed in the spring cultivars in one of the regions. For each marker, rapeseed cultivars were grouped by cluster analysis using bootstrapping. Combining RAPD and microsatellite markers produced a dendrogram that separated winter and spring cultivars. SWC High Level, SWC3162 and SWC3497 cultivars from Sweden appeared together and distant from other cultivars.

Key words: Brassica napus, genetic diversity, markers, microsatellite, RAPD.