Determination of genetic diversity among Turkish durum wheat landraces by microsatellites

Wheat landraces represent an important source of genetic variation that can be used for future wheat breeding program. The rich wheat landraces from Turkey have not been sufficiently analyzed genetically. For this reason, genetic diversity and relationship of the landraces must be determined. In this study, genetic diversity of 20 durum wheat landraces collected from different regions of Turkey were determined using 12 highly polymorphic microsatellite (SSR) markers. Genomic DNAs were isolated from ten accessions of all durum wheat landraces and specific regions were amplified with the polymerase chain reaction by using microsatellite markers. Polymorphic bands changed 4 to 9 per each SSR locus and the most polymorphic SSR loci were Wms 18, Wms 155, Xgwm 166 and Stm 578. The dendrogram showed that durum wheat landraces can be divided into two major groups. The coefficient of similarity among all germplasm ranged from 0.35 to 0.74. According to the estimated matrices and relationship among landraces accessions, it was determined that the 46847-47341, 31738-52841 and 31634-47923 were genetically the closest. The farthest genotypes were 52835-1680. The results showed that durum wheat landraces have high genetic variability and microsatellite DNA markers could be successfully employed for revealing the variability.Key words: Durum wheat, landraces, genetic diversity, microsatellite markers