Amy Bodian, Marion Nachtigall, Lothar Frese, Mohammed Aziz Elhoumaizi, Amina Hasnaoui, Khadidiatou Ndoye Ndir and Djibril Sané
In Morocco, date palm is the most important arboricultural crop and little is known about its germplasm. Thus, this work aimed at analyzing genetic diversity among 200 date palms sampled from three oases (Figuig, Tata and Zagora) of Morocco using microsatellite markers. Among these palms, 191 were females, belonging to 26 cultivars, and 9 were males. Eighteen primers were used for the analysis of their genetic diversity. Only 15 primers amplified successfully all the samples. The total number of alleles was 116 and the percentage of polymorphic loci was high and ranged between 60 and 100% with an average of 93.33%. The genetic similarity values ranged from 0.146 to 0.745. The molecular variance analysis showed 64% of variability among cultivars. The obtained dendrogram showed three groups and generally, a good structuring of cultivars. However, we noticed one case of homonymy among cultivars. In fact “Tadmant” cultivar of Figuig was different from “Tadmant” of Tata and Zagora. Males were clustered in two main subgroups.
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