Relationship among AFLP, RAPD marker diversity and Agromorphological traits in safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.)

of high-quality vegetable and industrial oil. 9 RAPD primers, 6 AFLP primer combinations and 12 agro-morphological traits were used to assess the genetic diversity of 20 accessions of saf flower representing global germplasm variability. Jacquards’ similarity coef ficient were used to understanding the genetic relationships among ccessions, for AFLP and RAPD markers and Euclidian similarity coefficient for agromorphological markers. UPGMA clustering algorithm was used for all markers. RAPD and AFLP markers grouped accessions into two main clusters whereas dendrogram of morphology data delineated the accessions into three clusters. Correlation coef ficient comparisons between similarity matrices and co-phenetic matrices obtained with the three markers revealed that AFLP displayed no congruence vis-a-vis RAPD and agromorphological data.