Estimation of Genetic Diversity in Six Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) Varieties using Morphological and Biochemical markers

Morphological characters and Electrophoretic SDS-PAGE analysis were performed to established genetic diversity for six important lentil varieties of Bangladesh and to elucidate their genetic relationships. Analyses of variance of morphological characters showed significant differences among varieties. The resulted protein banding pattern showed 57.12% polymorphism and could be considered as general biochemical finger print of the lentil. Dissimilarity index reveals maximum dissimilarity between BARI masur-3 and BARI masur-6 when morphological traits were observed but when seed storage protein profile was observed, distantly related varieties showed the lowest similarity were BARI masur-1 and BARI masur-5. Two dendrograms constructed based on UPGMA using both morphological traits data and SDS-PAGE profiles, revealed two main separate genetic clusters. Principal component analyses supported the result of dendrogram, which proved that BARI masur-1 and BARI masur-5 is the most distant variety among six. So these two varieties can be considered as valuable gene resources for further breeding programs.