GENETIC RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CULTIVARS OF Cicer arietinum AND ITS PROGENITOR GROWN IN TURKEY DETERMINED BY USING THE SSR MARKERS

ABSTRACT Genetic characterization plays a key role in chickpea breeding programs since genetic base of the cultivated chickpea is narrow. This study aims to determine the genetic relationships among 23 cultivated chickpea ( Cicer arietinum L.) and 2 genotypes of Cicer reticulatum Ladizusing simple sequence repeat (SSR) molecular markers with 10 SSR primer pairs. A total of 58 alleles were detected at 10 loci. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 11, with an average of 5.8. The polymorphic information (PI) ranged from 0.074 (NCPGR42) to 0.806 (NCPGR28) with an average of 0.42. The genetic similarity among all accessions ranged from 0.10 to 0.90. Genotypes of C. reticulatum were considerably different from the cultivated chickpea. The cultivars of chickpea were divided into four groups while Er99 and Dikbas cultivars were genetically the closest each other. ICC 4958, 'microsperma' or desi' chickpea was found genetically the closest cultivar to Cicer reticulatum . It was suggested that different groups should be crossed in breeding programs to increase variations in chickpeas. Key words: Chickpea, Cicer arietinum , Cicer reticulatum , Genetic relationship, SSR.