Background: Evaluation of genetic diversity and relationships among crop wild relatives is an important task in crop improvement. The main objective of the current study was to estimate molecular variability within the set of 91 samples from Triticum aestivum, Aegilops cylindrica, and Aegilops crassa species using 30 CAAT box-derived polymorphism (CBDP) and start codon targeted (SCoT) markers.
Results: Fifteen SCoT and Fifteen CBDP primers produced 262 and 298 fragments which all of them were polymorphic, respectively. The number of polymorphic bands (NPB), polymorphic information content (PIC), resolving power (Rp), and marker index (MI) for SCoT primers ranged from 14 to 23, 0.31 to 0.39, 2.55 to 7.49, and 7.56 to 14.46 with an average of 17.47, 0.34, 10.44, and 5.69, respectively, whereas these values for CBDP primers were 15 to 26, 0.28 to 0.36, 3.82 to 6.94, and 4.74 to 7.96 with a mean of 19.87, 0.31, 5.35, and 6.24, respectively. Based on both marker systems, analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) indicated that the portion of genetic diversity within species was more than among them. In both analyses, the highest values of the number of observed (Na) and effective alleles (Ne), Nei's gene diversity (He), and Shannon's information index (I) were estimated for Ae. cylindrica species.
Conclusion: The results of cluster analysis and population structure showed that SCoT and CBDP markers grouped all samples based on their genomic constitutions. In conclusion, the used markers are very effective techniques for the evaluation of the genetic diversity in wild relatives of wheat.
Keywords: Gene-based markers; Genetic diversity; Polymorphism information content; Population structure.