Assessment of genetic variation of bread wheat varieties using microsatellite markers

The DNA fingerprinting profiles of 11 bread wheat cultivars, grown in Turkey, was obtained by using 19 highly polymorphic wheat microsatellites. Up to six randomly selected individuals from each of these cultivars were subjected to analysis. Estimated polymorphism information content (PIC) values among 65 individual genotypes for 19 loci were between 0.36 and 0.87 with an average value of 0.68. The numbers of observed alleles were between 2 and 9, with an average value of 5.42. These relationships were assessed among cultivars and among their individual genotypes using the mean pairwise average square distance (D ₁) (or the delta mu measure of distance (Ddm)) matrix and neighbor-joining method based on `Nei-72' distance matrix, respectively. Two spring cultivars, `Kaklic-88' and `Orso', were closely related to each other; the other 9 winter and facultative cultivars were dispersed. Pedigrees of cultivars represented very little shared information among each other, therefore, they could not been utilized in comparisons. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.