Mohamed A. Nagaty and Salah El-Din El-Assal
This work were focusing on estimating of intra- and inter-cultivar polymorphisms among eight seedlings (one year old) of some grape cultivars: Superior; Early Superior; Thompson seedless-1; Thompson seedless-2; Thompson seedless-3; Fayomi; Roumi Ahmer and Bez El-Anza, (collected from Agricultural Research Center (ARC) farm, Giza, Egypt), as an efficient tool in order to assess the genetic relationships and develop cultivar-specific molecular fingerprints. We have used 8 SSR pairs of primers specific for grape and 10 RAPD primers. The SSR’s and RAPD’s have confirmed each other and the RAPD results were more realistic comparing to SSR ones, and these analyses fit together with fruit characters. One of the major clusters contains the three cultivars, Thompson seedless-1; Thompson seedless-2 and Thompson seedless-3, that sharing the same fruit characters. Moreover, the other major cluster contains Superior; Early Superior and Fayomi, besides two other separated cultivars, Roumi Ahmer and Bez El- Anza, which showed different fruit characters [35].when combined RAPD’s and SSR’s data together, it has showed genetic similarity ranged between 71.3 % and 93.1%. The highest genetic similarity was 93.1% between Superior and Early Superior, and similarity of 86% between Fayomi and both of Superior and Early Superior cvs. Moreover genetic similarity ranged between 87% and 89% which were recorded among Thompson seedless-1, Thompson seedless-2 and Thompson seedless-3 cultivars. Our long term objective is to use these fingerprints to identify molecular markers that co-segregate and could be used in isolating gene(s) which controlling some important traits, thereafter can be used in breeding programs (marker assisted selection). The different RAPD and SSR primers produced a total of 122 and 43 amplicons respectively; of which 80 and 33 amplicons were polymorphic among the studied cultivars. The SSR's and RAPD’s data were very promising in this aspect, because we could record very specific PCR products, especially those with Thompson seedless-1, Superior, Early Superior, Roumi Ahmer and Bez El-Anza cultivars. The outcome of this research project could help strongly the exiting pool of information on grape which may help assess national grape breeding programs.
