Determination of the Genetic Variations of Chickpea (Cicer Arietinum L.) Genotypes Preserved in the Jordanian Seed Genbank Using ISSR and SCoT Molecular Markers

This study was the first report on the genetic diversity among 18 local chickpea (Cicer arietinum) genotypes presented in the Jordanian National Agricultural Research Center (NARC) Seed Genbank collected from different Jordanian regions.Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) and Start Codon Target (SCoT) Polymorphism molecular markers were used to investigate their relationship.13 different ISSR primers amplified 135 bands, among them 110 were polymorphic.In comparison, the 10 SCoT primers amplified 166 bands, among them 129 were polymorphic.The polymorphism average and the PIC values in ISSR and SCoT primers were 72%, 75%, 0.17, and 0.26, respectively.The genetic similarity values were moderate, for ISSR-PCR analyses between 0.769-0.452,while for SCoT-PCR analyses ranged from 0.744 to 0.468.The UPGMA analysis grouped the 18 Cicer arietinum genotypes into two main clusters divided into sub-clusters and smaller groups in both ISSR and SCoT analyses.STRUCTURE analyses produced three populations mixed within each other in ISSR and SCoT analyses.Current results indicated that SCoT molecular marker proved to be more informative in distinguishing closely related genotypes than ISSR molecular marker.The 18 C. arietinum genotypes are genetically related to each other, even though they were geographically distant landraces.Our findings provided significant data for characterizing the genotypes within the seed genebank.;however, there is no duplication among the stored Cicer arietinum genotypes.