Biochemical and genetic variation of some Syrian wheat varieties using NIR, RAPD and AFLPs techniques

This study was performed to assess chemical components and genetic variability of five Syrian wheat varieties using NIR, RAPD and AFLP techniques. NIR technique showed that Cham6 was the best variety in term of wheat grain quality due to their lowest protein (%), hardness, water uptake and baking volume and the highest starch (%) compared to the other tested varieties. PCR amplifications with 21 RAPD primers and 13 AFLP PCs primer combinations gave 104 and 466 discernible loci of which 24 (18.823%) and 199 (45.527%) were polymorphic for the both techniques respectively. Our data indicated that the three techniques gave similar results regarding the degree of relatedness among the tested varieties. In the present investigation, AFLP fingerprinting was more efficient than the RAPD assay. Where the letter exhibited lower Marker Index (MI) average (0.219) compared to AFLP one (3.203). The pattern generated by RAPD, AFLPs markers or by NIR separated the five wheat varieties into two groups. The first group consists of two subclusters. The first subcluster involved Cham8 and Bohous6, while the second one includes Cham6 that is very closed to precedent varieties. The second group consists of Bohous9 and Cham7 that were also closely related. Based on this study, the use of NIR, RAPD and AFLP techniques could be a powerful tool to detect the effectiveness relationships of these technologies. (author)