ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC COMPONENTS AND GENETIC DIVERSITY OF SIX EGYPTIAN CLOVER (Trifolium alexandrinum L.) GENOTYPES USING ISSR AND URP MARKERS

Six Egyptian clover genotypes, i.e., Helaly, Sakha 4, Gemmeiza 1, Serw1, Giza6 and Sakha composite were used in this study. Data was calculated on four cuts and seasonal yield for fresh and dry forage yield. The results indicated that the mean square values were highly significant for genotypes for all studied traits. Helaly cultivar gave the highest values in four cuts and seasonal yield for fresh forage yield. High heritability values were recorded for all studied traits except 1st fresh yield which recorded moderate value. Phenotypic coefficient of variability (PCV) was higher than genotypic coefficient of variability (GCV) in all cuts and seasonal yields. Genetic variations among the six Egyptian clover cultivars were evaluated using universal rice primers (URP) and inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. URP fingerprinting detected more polymorphic loci (90%) than the ISSR fingerprinting (77.55%). Mean PIC (polymorphism information content) and band informativness (Ib) for each of these marker systems were (0.21, 0.26 for ISSR and 0.32, 0.46 for URP) respectively, suggested that URP marker systems were effective than ISSR in determining polymorphisms. Pairwise similarity index values ranged from 0.37 to 0.72 for ISSR, 0.23 to 0.62 for URP and 0.29 to 0.65 for combined ISSRs and URP indicated the genetic distinctness among the studied genotypes.