Abstract
Genomes of 14 cereal germplasms (three barley cultivars: G124, G128, and G2000; two maize cultivars: Hybrid 10, and Hybrid 311; three rice cultivars: Sakha 101, Sakha 102, and G 182; two sorghum cultivars: white sorghum, and red sorghum; and four wheat cultivars: Sakha 95, Gemmizah 9, G 168, and Sakha 93) were characterized using two molecular markers: inter simple sequence repeat polymerase chain reaction (ISSR-PCR) and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA PCR (RAPD-PCR) to address the genetic relationships among them. Ten ISSR primers were used for fingerprinting the 14 cereal cultivars. A total of 109 ISSR markers of 400-3000 bp were scored as a result of ISSR-PCR markers. In addition, 130 RAPD markers were scored as a result of fingerprinting the same cultivars using 15 RAPD primers. ISSR-PCR and RAPD-PCR data were analyzed separately and together using the numerical taxonomy system of multivariate statistical (NTSYS-pc) program to address the genetic relationships among the 14 cereal cultivars under study. All the resulting dendrograms showed that the cereal germplasms under study were grouped into two clusters; the first one consists of maize and sorghum cultivars that appeared closely related to each other, whereas the second cluster consists of rice, wheat and barley. In the second cluster, barley and wheat cultivars appeared closer to each other than rice. This study showed that both ISSR and RAPD markers succeeded in characterizing the genomes of the cereal crop cultivars under study and succeeded in addressing their phylogenetic relationships.