GENETIC AND PHENOTYPIC PARAMETERS FOR WILD AVENA SPECIES USING AFLP MOLECULAR MARKERS

Genetic and phenotypic parameters for 21 wild oat species collected from Jordan and two commercial cultivars (Dolphin and F199084-d4 imported from Australia and Canada, respectively) were investigated. Significant differences were found for seedling emergence, panicle emergence, leaf number per plant, leaf height, head height, fertile tiller number per plant, flag leaf length, flag leaf width, awn length, and seed weight per plant. Genetic parameters and relationships among oat genotypes were established using ten AFLP primer combinations. The ten AFLP primer combinations produced 1157 bands among which 339 were polymorphic, representing 29.3 % polymorphism. These polymorphic bands were sufficient to estimate genetic variation among oat genotypes. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic average (UPGMA) classified the genotypes into two groups based on Dice similarity coefficient, ranging from a high of 0.78 to a low of 0.26. Clustering based on phenotypical traits showed two main groups that are slightly different compared to AFLP based groups. Correlation between matrices of similarity coefficients based on AFLP and morphological data showed low level of positive correlation (r= 0.26) based on Mantel test. The genotypes with high performance are considered as a valuable genetic resource for oat breeders.