Abstract
The study of genetic diversity between Lathyrus sativus L. and its relative species may yield fundamental insights into evolutionary history and provide options to meet the challenge of climate changes. 30 SSR loci were employed to assess the genetic diversity and population structure of 283 individuals from wild and domesticated populations from Africa, Europe, Asia and ICARDA. The allele number per loci ranged from 3 to 14. The average gene diversity index and average polymorphism information content (PIC) was 0.5340 and 0.4817, respectively. A model based population structure analysis divided the germplasm resources into three subgroups: the relative species, the grasspea from Asia, and the grasspea from Europe and Africa. The UPGMA dendrogram and PCA cluster also demonstrated that Asian group was convincingly separated from the other group. The AMOVA result showed that the cultivated species was quite distinct from its relative species, however a low level of differentiation was revealed among their geographic origins. In all, these results provided a molecular basis for understanding genetic diversity of L. sativus and its relatives.
Highlights
The genus Lathyrus L. includes as many as 187 species [1,2]
The Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) result showed that the cultivated species was quite distinct from its relative species, a low level of differentiation was revealed among their geographic origins. These results provided a molecular basis for understanding genetic diversity of L. sativus and its relatives
At K = 2, all the germplasm were divided into L. sativus and its relatives
Summary
The genus Lathyrus L. includes as many as 187 species [1,2]. These are distributed throughout temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere and extend into tropical East Africa and South America. The main centers of diversity include the Mediterranean and Irano-Turanian regions [3]. Grasspea (Lathyrus sativus L.) is the only species widely cultivated as a food crop in the genus Lathyrus, whereas other species (Lathyrus cicera L. and Lathyrus ochrus L.) are cultivated to a lesser extent [4]. Grasspea has great agronomic potential as a grain and forage legume in the fragile agro-ecosystems, because of its ability to survive under extreme climatic conditions such as drought, flood and salinity [5].
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