Genetic diversity analysis of North Africa’s barley using SSR markers

Abstract

It was demonstrated that some North Africa barley accessions have diverse tolerance sources for abiotic stresses and a good nutritional quality, but the studies done were incomplete since they were realized separately in each country apart.

To implement a more complete analysis, 31 barley accessions originated from North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt) were analyzed using 11 SSR markers selected from the seven barley linkage groups for studying the genetic diversity among these chosen barley accessions.

Over the 11 SSR markers, a total of 478 reproducible bands were scored with an average of 2.13 alleles/primer and the average polymorphism information content of 0.5.

Genetic distance analysis of the 31 accessions showed a large genetic diversity and high number of different groups. The most accessions are clustered according to their eco-geographical origin, according to their pedigree and agronomic characters or according to the caryopsis character (hulled or naked caryopsis). This high number of obtained groups is an invaluable aid in crop improvement strategies and confirms the opinion suggesting that North Africa could be a secondary center of origin of barley. The various growing conditions and the multiple uses of barley in each country may be the cause of the large variability of the barley germplasm in each region.