Studies on genetic diversity between and within six wheat populations using ISSR markers

The study of the genetic diversity of crop populations is essential for the identification of genetic resources and their use in breeding programmes. The use of genotypes with suitable genetic distance and general combining ability as parents will produce hybrids with high potential. Therefore, we evaluated the genetic diversity in six different wheat populations using 10 ISSR markers. Three markers showed no polymorphism, whereas the remaining seven which showed polymorphism and were used for statistical analysis. Primer 2 produced the highest number of bands and all the bands were polymorphic. The least and greatest heterozygosities (mean, 0.127 and 0.243) were obtained in populations C 88 and C 84, respectively. The smallest (between populations C 84 and C 89) and largest (between populations C 87 and C 89) genetic distances were 0.063 and 0.187, respectively. Cluster analysis using the complete linkage method based on the Dice similarity coefficient assigned populations to two groups. Molecular variance analysis showed that the diversity between and within populations was 7 and 93%, respectively. Because within-population genetic diversity was higher than between-population genetic diversity, we recommend selection of genotypes within the populations in either group for general combining ability and hybrid production.