Full Length Research Paper

Detection of genetic diversity in Moroccan durum wheat accessions using agro-morphological traits and microsatellite markers

Hafida Zarkti^1,2, Hassan Ouabbou¹*, Abderraouf Hilali² and Sripada M. Udupa³

¹Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), Centre Régional de la Recherche Agronomique de Settat, B.P. 589, Settat, Morocco.

²Département de Biologie Appliqué et Agro-alimentaire, FST de Settat, Université Hassan I, B.P. 577, Settat, Morocco.

³ICARDA-INRA Cooperative Research Project, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), B.P. 6299, Rabat, Morocco.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: ouabbou@yahoo.com .

Accepted 22 June, 2010

 Abstract

Characterization of germplasm by agro-morphological, biochemical and DNA-markers provide powerful tools to precise germplasm identification, quantify the genetic diversity and to estimate the phylogenetic relationship among accessions in many crop species. The objective of the present study was to characterize a subset of 23 Moroccan relevant durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum) accessions selected from the National Gene Bank of Morocco for their genetic diversity using agro-morphological and microsatellite markers, and to measure the genetic distance among these accessions using UPGMA cluster analysis. Durum wheat accessions were planted under field condition and their agro-morphological characters such as  days to emergence, days to tillering, days to booting, days to head emergence, days to flowering, days to  physiological maturity, plant height, and thousands kernel weight were recorded. The same set of accessions was also analyzed for polymorphism with 7 genomic microsatellite markers. The results indicated that the evaluated germplasm comprises of useful variation for future breeding activities. Furthermore, the cluster analysis based on microsatellite data showed the closest correlation with the groupings of particular genotypes based on agro-morphological characters. The authors results suggest that the characterization based on agro-morphological traits and genotypic markers will be a useful tool to the breeders to choose genotypes with appropriate diversity.

Key words: Durum wheat, Triticum germplasm, agro-morphological and microsatellite markers, genetic diversity.