BIODIVERSITY ASSESSMENT FOR SOME ALMOND GENOTYPES CULTIVATED IN LIBYA USING SRAP AND ISSR

This work aimed to assess the biodiversity of eighteen almond genotypes grown in Libya on the bases of some agronomical, biochemical and molecular characteristics. The agronomical traits were: fruit length, fruit diameter, fruit fresh and dry weights, number of fruits/tree and total yield/tree. The biochemical traits were: total oil, linoleic acid and protein contents. In this context, it was very important to establish an accurate DNA fingerprints for cultivar characterization in order to identify the genetic diversity among these genotypes. For this purpose, 20 combinations of SRAP and 9 primers of ISSR molecular markers were applied to discriminate the 18 almond (Prunus Amygdalus, dulcis L.) genotypes. SRAP generated polymorphic and unique bands for all genotypes. SRAP generated 98 bands, out of these, 22 were common bands while 14 were unique ones used as molecular markers, eight bands out of these unique bands could be considered as positive markers and six as negative markers. ISSR generated 111 bands, out of which, there were three common bands and 19 unique ones, fourteen bands out of them could be considered as positive markers and five as negative markers for a particular genotype. Similarity indices generated shuffling in the arrangement in the cultivar relations according to the two used molecular techniques (SRAP and ISSR), as in SRAP, the two most closely related cultivars were Ansperabilla and Faccinado with similarity value of 0.819, while it was 0.683 between genotypes Ansperabilla and Faccinado as revealed from ISSR data. On the other hand, the two most distantly related cultivars, according to SRAP data, were Avola and Castilla, with similarity value of 0.423, while it was 0.184 between City Bianca and Castilla genotypes according to ISSR data. Dendrogram was conducted for the eighteen genotypes under investigation using the two used molecular techniques. The results revealed different distances in their genetic relationships among the eighteen almond genotypes under investigation.