Improvement of Morphological Characters in Gypsophila elegans M. Bieb Plant by Diethyl Sulfate and Detected Variation through SRAP Molecular Markers

Diethyl sulphate was used to induce genetic variability in G. elegans plant to improve morphological characters. Besides, changes in the genomic DNA between mutants and un-treated plants were investigated. The results revealed that un-treated plants gave the highest germination percentage in M1 and M2 (94.03 and 96.17%), respectively, compared to treated plants that recorded lowest germination percentage in M1 and M2 (67.03 and 77.46%) respectively, at 4000 ppm. Morphological characters like plant height, branches number/plant, number of days to flowering and flowers number /plant showed different significant variation between mutants and un-treated plants, 1000 ppm and 2000 ppm caused early flowering, recorded high values, in M1 and M2, 3000 ppm recorded moderate values and 4000 ppm and un-treated plants delayed flowering phase and recorded lowest values, respectively. Using DES produced many mutants in leaves and flowers morphology. Molecular marker analyses using SRAP markers, showed variation between original and mutant genotypes, the highest number of bands was produced by SRAP-4 (8bands), while SRAP-6 generated the lowest number (3 bands). Whilst, SRAP-2 displayed the highest number of polymorphism (66.67%), but SRAP-4 scored the lowest polymorphism (12.50%). Genetic diversity six primers were used product 35 bands, 12 bands were polymorphic and recorded 34.29% polymorphism and 23 bands were monomorphic. Therefore, it was confirmed that, using SRAP markers, the existence of genetic diversity at the genomic DNA level between mutants DES-treated and control, depending on DES concentration. It was concluded induced mutation by DES used to improvement morphological characters and increase genetic diversity.