Assessment of Genetic Diversity of Chickpea Germplasm (Cicer arietinum L.) by Using SSR Molecular Marker

Identification of genetic diversity and classification of genetic resources (germplasm) are of important and essential activities in breeding and management of plant genetic resources. In order to study of genetic diversity of chickpea genotypes، 38 pair’s primers of SSR were used on 18 landrace and 30 improved varieties. After genomic DNA extraction and PCR reaction، primers produced 117 polymorphic bands and the mean of polymorphic band per primer was 3. 5. The highest value of polymorphic information content (PIC) belonged to TAA170 primer (0. 77) and the lowest value of PIC belonged to Cstms5 primer (0. 08). Mean of PIC for all primers was 0. 48. Calculated Jacard similarity coefficient ranged from 0. 47 to 0. 94 among genotypes. In order to assess genetic relationships، cluster analysis was performed by method NJ with Splitstree (ver 4. 13. 1) software. Results of this study revealed that SSR molecular markers has a valuable potential for evaluation and discrimination of chickpea genotypes.