Abstract
Morphological and molecular analyses were conducted to evaluate the genetic diversity among eleven Egyptian date palms (Phoenix dactylifera L.). Ten SSR primer pairs revealed a high percentage of polymorphism (97.4%) among 38 total number of alleles, while 11 SCoT primers produced 48.5% from 171 amplified fragments. SCoTs recorded effective multiplex ratio (EMR) and PIC values of 7.5 and 0.14, respectively, opposing to 3.7 and 0.26 for SSRs, respectively. A similar marker index has thus resulted in both markers. Nei’s gene diversity (h) was generally low for both marker systems indicating homogeneous nature and narrow genetic background for the studied Egyptian date palms, which was also emphasized through their high genetic similarity estimates. The results of UPGMA cluster analysis and PCoA grouped the eleven date palms according to their geographical location and sex. In addition to classical morphological characters, the current study confirmed the importance of using SCoTs as functionally gene-based multi-loci markers besides nuclear SSR loci to assess the genetic variations and cultivar identification among Egyptian date palm genotypes
Highlights
Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is one of the most ancient cultivated fruit crops belong to family Arecaceae
Sewi male 1 had the highest number of leaflets per leaf (250) where the lowest one was observed in Amhat and Sewi-Sakara (154)
The present study showed a little number of Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) alleles and a high degree of polymorphism through the ten loci (97.4%) with an average of 3.7, while Start Codon Targeted (SCoT) primers generated a lower percentage (48.5%) with a mean of 7.5
Summary
Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is one of the most ancient cultivated fruit crops belong to family Arecaceae. It is mainly grown in the arid regions of the Middle East and North Africa (Barrow, 1998; Zohary and Hopf, 2000; Chao and Krueger, 2007). Egypt is the world’s largest date palm average yield producers, representing about 20% of global production (FAO, 2014). Biodiversity conservation of date palm is a crucial concern to maintain the diverse number of date palm cultivars in Egypt (Rizk et al, 2004). Progress in any genetic conservation scheme relies on understanding the genetic variation existing in the gene pool (Jubrael et al, 2005; Jaradat, 2014). New cultivars have been introduced from different countries that may result in the establishment of novel recombinant
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