Genetic diversity and relationship of sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia Scop.) germplasm as revealed by amplified fragment length polymorphism markers

Abstract

Sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia Scop.) is a perennial forage legume widely distributed in the northern temperate regions of the world. Its genetic improvement has been relatively slow due, in part, to the lack of genetic information including molecular characterization of sainfoin germplasm. An attempt was made to evaluate genetic diversity and relationships among 38 sainfoin accessions collected from different regions of the world using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. Five AFLP primer pairs were used to assess 367 individual plants, which produced 1042 polymorphic AFLP bands. The frequencies of the scored bands in all assayed individuals ranged from 0.003 to 0.973, with a mean value of 0.165. The analysis of molecular variance revealed higher within-accession (84.3%) genetic variation than among accessions (15.7%). The genetic distance based on inter-accession distance matrices was significant for most accessions but was not significant for accessions sharing similar parents. A dendrogram of the collected accessions showed two clusters at an inter-accession genetic distance coefficient of 0.36. The revealed information on genetic distance and genetic diversity of the sainfoin accessions is useful for selecting genetically diverse germplasms for sainfoin genetic improvement efforts.

Assessment of sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia Scop.) germplasm for agro‐morphological traits and nutritive value

“…The 31 sainfoin accessions were grouped into three main clusters based on their agro-morphological traits and nutritive value. Relationships among the sainfoin accessions as revealed by agro-morphological traits and nutritive values in this study were consistent with certain patterns detected by amplified fragment length polymorphism marker-based clustering in these same accessions (Bhattarai, Coulman, Fu, Beattie, & Biligetu, 2018 Means with same letters within the row for each trait are not significantly different at p = 0.05.…”

Sainfoin production in western Canada: A review of agronomic potential and environmental benefits

“…As a consequence of the apparent differences in agronomic performance and CT concentration associated with genetic stock, many researchers have begun their studies by first obtaining seeds from globally diverse populations (Azuhnwi et al., , ; Bhattarai, Coulman, Fu, Beattie, & Biligetu, ; Carbonero, Carbonero, Smith, & Brown, ; Gea, Stringano, Brown, & Mueller‐Harvey, ; Goplen, Howarth, Sarkar, & Lesins, ; Hatew et al., , ; Hosaininejadmir, Jafari, & Nakhjavan, ; Jafari, Rasouli, Tabaei‐Aghdaei, Shanjani, & Alizadeh, ; Lorenz, Carbonero, Smith, & Udén, ; Malisch et al., ; Mohajer et al., ; Prospéri, Demarquet, Angevain, & Mansat, ; Rasouli, Jafari, Tabaei‐Aghdaei, & Shanjani, ; Thill et al., ; Zarrabian, Majidi, & Ehtemam, ). This reflects an attempt to rapidly enhance research efforts on sainfoin by utilizing advanced techniques, in part due to new interest in potential environmental and animal health benefits.…”

Assessment of diverse cicer milkvetch (Astragalus cicer L.) germplasm for agro-morphological traits under a stockpiling system

“…In the future, a detailed genomic study of the 27 populations would confirm the degree of genetic diversity within and among populations. A high degree of variation in agro-morphological traits was also linked to a high degree of genomic variation within populations of sainfoin (Bhattarai et al 2017(Bhattarai et al , 2018 and crested wheatgrass (Baral et al 2018;Tandoh et al 2019). Ploidy differences among the cicer milkvetch populations were not examined in this study.…”