Evaluation of genetic diversity among Jordanian fig germplasm accessions by morphological traits and ISSR markers

This study describes phenotypic variation in leaf and fruit traits and investigates genetic relationships among 24 landrace (Ficus carica sativa)and 6 wild form (F. carica L. caprificus) accessions of fig using inter simple sequences repeat (ISSR) markers. For phenotypic traits, pair-wise Euclidean distances ranged from 0.90 to 9.80. Principal component analysis revealed that the first five components explained 74.14% of the total morphological variation, where fruit traits contributed most of the total variation. Nei's genetic distance based on ISSR data ranged from 0.00 to 0.83, suggesting that the collected accessions are genetically diverse. UPGMA clustering based on phenotypic traits compared with that based on ISSR data were not consistent, however, some common groupings were observed in ISSR and phenotypic traits. In most cases, accessions collected from the same landrace or from fig wild forms tended to cluster together, confirming that names given by farmers to the collected landrace accessions are consistent and confirming also the common genetic background of wild fig accessions. High phenotypic and ISSR variability indicate that fig collections used in this study include rich and valuable genes for fig breeding. ISSR screening revealed the presence of the same ISSR allelic profile for accessions from the same landrace or wild form accessions, indicating that ISSR can provide the basic information necessary to help gene banks to conserve materials from different genetic background rather than duplicates from same clone. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.