Assessment of Genetic Diversity for Some Egyptian Wheat Varieties based on Morphological Characters and SSR Markers

Abstract

The genetic diversity estimates can be useful in important genotypes selection for plant breeders. Eight durum and three bread wheat cultivars were used to study and compare morphological traits with molecular study using SSR technique based genetic diversity estimates. Significant and highly significant differences among wheat genotypes were observed for all traits except flag leaf attitude and outer glume pubescence. Highly significant differences were obtained between durum and bread wheat genotypes for most studied traits. Moderate to low broad-sense heritability estimates were obtained for morphological studied traits. Positive and high significant correlation was found for ear density with foliage color (r= 0.51), waxiness of flag leaf sheath (r= 0.57), waxiness of peduncle (r= 0.60) and peduncle length (r= 0.53), whereas a negative correlation was found between ear density and plant height (r= -0.52, P