REGULAR ARTICLE
Genetic variability in multiple accessions of two Canadian heritage
crop cultivars as revealed by AFLP markers
Yong-Bi Fu, Ken W. Richards, Gregory W. Peterson
Communications in Biometry and Crop Science (2006) 1 (1), 1-10.
ABSTRACT
Verifying duplicate accessions of plant germplasm using molecular
markers can be challenging, as many of these accessions are genetically
heterogeneous. A pilot study was made to quantify the genetic
variability in six truly duplicated accessions from each of two Canadian
heritage crop cultivars (Marquis wheat and Canadian Thorpe barley).
Three amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) primer pairs were
applied to genotype 15 seeds for each Marquis accession and 11 seeds
from each Canadian Thorpe accession. About 115 polymorphic AFLP bands
were scored for each seed sample. Analyses of these AFLP data revealed a
wide range of band frequencies from 0.02 to 0.99 with an average of 0.54
for Marquis and 0.52 for Canadian Thorpe. The proportion of the total
AFLP variation explained among the six wheat accessions was 5.1% and
among the six barley accessions 4.5%. These findings indicate that a
threshold value of 5% AFLP variation could be used to verify the
duplicates of these heritage cultivars.
Key Words: genetic variability; wheat;
barley; amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP); duplicate
accession
