Transferability of barley microsatellite markers for assessing genetic relationships of wheat wild relatives of Triticum and Aegilops genera

Comparative genomics has revealed a high degree of collinearity between related species, which allows transferability of interspecies and intergenus   markers. The aim of this study was to examine the transferability of barley microsatellite markers among species of Triticum and Aegilops genus for determination of their genetic relationships. The experiments was carried out in faculty of agriculture, university of Tabriz, Iran, in 2016. Among 165 evaluated barley microsatellite primer pairs in 40 genotypes from nine species of Triticum and Aegilops genus, 62 (37.57%) showed successful amplification at least in the genome of one species and 50 (30.3%) were polymorphic. Using 50 polymorphic primer pairs, 223 alleles were amplified and number of alleles varied from 2 to 14 with an average of 4.46. The mean of polymorphic information content and genetic diversity were 0.55 and 0.6, respectively. The studied genotypes were assigned into four groups using Nieghbor-Joining clustering algorithm and Guckes Cantor evolutionary distance coefficient. The species of Triticum and Aegilops genera were grouped separately, and within each genus, grouping was in accordance with their genome structure. In principal coordinate analysis, two first coordinates explained 24.63 and 21.86% of molecular variation, respectively, and distribution of the genotypes based on two first coordinates was in concordance with grouping of cluster analysis. The results indicated that the transferable barley markers could be successfully utilized in wheat and its wild relatives genetics and breeding studies.