Investigating genetic diversity of a sample of wild barely germplasm using SSR molecular marker

Determining the level of genetic diversity and relationships among genotypes is necessary to identify the parents for different breeding purposes. In the present study, genetic diversityof 55 samples of wild barley germplasm, Hordeum spontaneum, collected from different regions of the world was evaluated using 14 microsatellite (SSR) markers. A total of 52 alleles were amplified with an average of 5.2 alleles per locus and average frequency of the major allele was 0.51. Polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0.37 to 0.81 with an average of 0.629 and gene diversity or expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.38 to 0.82 with an average of 0.635. Results of the measured diversity parameters in the studied markers showed that Bmag007, EBmac0701 and Bmac134 were the most appropriate markers to separate genotypes. Cluster analysis based on SSR data and UPGMA method using simple matching similarity matrix assigned the genotypes into six groups. The genotypes belonging to each group were generally collected from a specific geographical region. In many cases, a mismatch between the genotypes and its geographical region was observed. Based on these results, the highest similarity was observed between Syria and Jordan genotypes and the samples from Kazakhstan had lowest similarity to the genotypes collected from these two countries. The result of this research showed that there is considerable genetic diversity in the studied wild barley samples which can be used to improve the cultivated barley after the identification of their useful genes.