STUDIES ON GENETIC POLYMORPHISM IN Luffa aegyptica LANDRACES USING RAPD -PCR

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Genet. Dept., Fac. Agric., Zagazig Univ., Egypt

Abstract

Genetic polymorphism of eight open and self pollinated Luffa landraces, which collected from four Egyptian regions, Ismailia, El-Arish, Zagazig and Meet-Gamr, was studied. Four selected decamer primers, out of eight screened, generated a total of 46 RAPD fragments of which 31 were polymorphic (67%). The number of amplification products of each primer varied from 8 (OPA-04) to 16 (OPC-02) with average 11.5 per primer. The band size of PCR products ranged from 100 bp (OPC-02) to 1530 bp (OPC-06). The average similarity coefficient between Luffa landraces based on combined RAPD-PCR products of the four used primers was 0.783, indicating a clear relationship between such entries and showing that genomes were not much different from each other. The highest similarity coefficient (0.889) was found between the selfed Ismailia landrace and selfed Meet-Gamr or selfed El-Arish landrace. But, the lowest similarity coefficient (0.667) was detected between open-pollinated landrace of Zagazig and each of selfed Meet-Gamr and open-pollinated El-Arish landrace. The largest distance was detected between open pollinated landrace of Zagazig and each of selfed landrace of Meet-Gamr as well as the open pollinated landrace of El-Arish. While the smallest genetic distance was observed between selfed landrace of Ismailia and each of selfed landrace of Meet-Gamr and El-Arish landrace. The constructed dendrogram distributed the eight Luffa landraces into three major clusters, the largest one included five members and divided into two sub-clusters. RAPD-PCR technique appeared to be suitable in revealing genetic variability, relatedness and consequently genetic polymorphism among the studied luffa landraces.

Keywords