ESTIMATION OF THE ISOZYMATIC GENETIC-VARIABILITY OF A SPANISH AVENA-SATIVA GERMPLASM COLLECTION

An analysis of Spanish land races of Avena sativa from the Germplasm Bank of the I.N.I.A. was carried out using starch gel electrophoresis. Samples of 15 seedlings per accession were used for estimating the intra- and interpopulational genetic variability. Electrophoretic analyses were performed with crude extracts from 15 day-old seedling leaflets by means of eight isozymatic systems representing a total of ten genetic loci. Two systems were monomorphic in all the accessions, while the other six showed polymorphism both within and between populations. Intrapopulational variability was particularly high in this collection, only 16 out of the 137 accessions being uniform for all the isozyme systems. Thus the material was shown to represent a high potential of genetic variability for breeding programmes.