Genetic Variation in Wild Sorghum (Sorghum Bicolor Ssp. Verticilliflorum (L.) Moench) Germplasm from Ethiopia Assessed by Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD)

Abstract

The extent and distribution of genetic variation in wild sorghum (Sorghum bicolor ssp. verticilliflorum (L.) Moench) collected from five different geographical regions in Ethiopia were analyzed using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers for 93 individuals representing 11 populations. Nine decamer primers generated a total of 83 polymorphic bands with 8-12 bands per primer and a mean of 9 bands across the 93 individuals. The amount of genetic variation among the populations (H = 0.37) and among the geographical region (H = 0.44) was low to moderate, despite the high degree of polymorphic bands per primer. Similarly, the mean genetic distance (0.08) among populations as well as among regions of origin (0.04) of the population was found to be low. The low genetic variation may be due to the reduced population size of the wild sorghum in Ethiopia because of habitat change. Partitioning of the genetic variation into between and within the population as well as between and within the regions of origin revealed that 75% and 88% of the variation was found within the populations and within the regions, respectively. Cluster analysis of genetic distance estimates further confirmed low level of differentiation of wild sorghum populations both on population and regional bases. The implications of the results for genetic conservation purposes are discussed.

Genetic structure and relationships within and between cultivated and wild sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) in Kenya as revealed by microsatellite markers

“…This is especially needed for Africa, the center of origin and primary diversification of sorghum. Attempts have been made to use in situ collected samples but such studies have been limited to separate investigations of genetic diversity and structure in either cultivated sorghum (Djè et al 1998;Djè et al 1999;Ayana et al 2000b;Ayana et al 2001;Ghebru et al 2002;Barnaud et al 2007;Deu et al 2008;Sagnard et al 2008;Barro-Kondombo et al 2010) or its closest wild relatives (Ayana et al 2000a). Our study applied microsatellite markers to analyse cultivated sorghum and its closest wild relatives sampled from different growing regions in Kenya, in order to elucidate patterns of diversity within and among the two congeners, and to shed more light on their genetic and evolutionary relationships.…”

DNA markers reveal genetic structure and localized diversity of Ethiopian sorghum landraces

“…Seeds are shared through gift, exchange in kind, and purchase. Low differentiations between landraces from different geographic regions have been reported in previous studies on sorghum (Dean et al, 1999;Dje et al, 1999Dje et al, , 2000Ayana et al, 2000;Ghebru et al, 2001). In addition, the phylogenic analyses showed a significant trend but it did not reveal a strong association between general clustering pattern of individual landraces and geographic origin.…”

“…The exploitation of molecular markers in characterizing the variability of Ethiopian sorghums is very limited. The RAPD study of Ayana et al (2000) based on sorghum samples from different parts of Ethiopia, SSR studies of Weerasooriya et al (2016) from two areas of Western Ethiopia, and SSR and AFLP studies of sorghums from Eastern Ethiopia by Geleta et al (2006) are investigations on small samples of accessions. Similar studies covering those of farmers' landraces within specific domains of the diverse sorghum growing conditions and agro-ecologies of the country such as NE Ethiopia would be much more informative.…”

Use of RAPD Markers in Comparison with Agro-morphological Traits for Estimation of Diversity among Chickpea Genotypes

“…Among these, RAPD markers are popular due to simplicity of application. They have been extensively used to study genetic variability in crop plants such as sorghum (Ayana et al, 2000;Agrama and Tuinstra, 2004), potato (Alam et al, 2012), rice (Dey et al, 2012) and wheat (Kafeel, 2014). RAPD markers have also been used to find out phylogenetic relationship in the genus Cicer (Iruela et al, 2002).…”