ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC, MORPHOLOGICAL AND AGRONOMICAL DIVERSITY AMONG JORDANIAN EGGPLANT (SOLANUM MELONGENA L.) LANDRACES USING RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNA (RAPD)

Genetic, morphological and agronomical variations were assessed for 10 Jordanian eggplant landraces that are grown by local framers and have been kept for many generations (our genebank numbers are E4, E12, E17, E18, E21, E22, E23, E24, E27 and E29) in addition to three cultivars (‘Hybrid Shanta’, ‘Shanta’ and ‘Samar’), coded as Ec1, Ec2 and Ec5. For morphological and agronomical traits, these eggplant landraces were evaluated and characterized under Jordan Valley conditions, where high temperature and salty soils prevail. Considerable differences in plant growth habit, yield and fruit characteristics were observed among the genotypes. These landraces can be used by breeders in breeding programs according to their objectives (yield under stress, bitterness, color, size, etc.). Furthermore, higher yield in E18 and E29 is useful for further studies on salt tolerance. To assess genetic variation, the non-transcribed spacer of the 5S rDNA yielded invariant banding profiles for all genotypes. However, nine RAPD primers showed polymorphisms in 81 of 85 bands amplified. To assess genotype similarities, a total of 1053 data entries were utilized using Jaccard’s similarity coefficient, and a UPGMA dendrogram was constructed from similarity values. The studied landraces showed considerable genetic variation among each other. The maximum similarity recorded was 80.5% between genotypes E22 and E23, while the most distant genotypes (E12 and Ec2) were having 4.8% similarity. E12 did not cluster with other accessions, while the remaining accessions clustered into two major clusters: cluster I with 10 genotypes (E22, E23, E17, E21, E18, Ec1, E27, E24, Ec2, E4) and cluster II with two genotypes (E29, Ec5). Primers C02 and RAPD02 could differentiate all genotypes based on the banding profiles they generated (discrimination power of 1). However, other primers need to be combined to discriminate all genotypes from each other. The best, but not the only, combination between primers other than C02 and RAPD02 was the combination of C01, C15, and RAPD03. However, for future breeding projects, the detected morphological and agronomical variations need to be linked to genetic polymorphism through DNA markers.