Abstract:
Five genotypes of garlic (Allium sativum L.), namely Balady (G1), Chinese (G2), Sids-40 (G3), Egaseed-1 (G4) and Egaseed-2 (G5) were used for assessing tissue culture response, genetic variability and polymorphism amongst which and to identify molecular markers associated with tissue culture response using ISSR and SRAP techniques. Significant differences were found among the five genotypes, the concentration of growth regulators as well as the interaction between them for all measured tissue culture traits. The Euclidean-distance dendrogram using tissue culture data separated the five garlic genotypes into two clusters; the first cluster comprised the highly responsive genotypes (G1, G2 and G3) while the less responsive genotypes (G4 and G5) grouped together in the second cluster. Using two molecular marker systems (ISSR and SRAP), a total of 191 fragments were amplified from the five garlic genotypes and 107 (56.61%) of them were polymorphic. The dendrogram generated based on combined ISSR and SRAP data showed two main clusters, the first comprised of one genotype (G2) which had the highest mean values for three tissue culture traits on all concentra-tions of growth regulators, while the second comprised the four other garlic genotypes (G1, G3, G4 and G5) which were the less responsive. Highly significant positive corre-lation (r = 0.595: p = 0.001) was found between the data of the tested molecular markers and tissue culture response. Thirteen DNA fragments were found to be positive molecular genetic markers for tissue culture response in garlic genotypes. The investigation demonstrated that ISSR and SRAP analyses showed considerable potential for variety identification and discrimination and could be useful for tissue culture response in garlic.