THE TAXONOMIC CHARACTERIZATION OF ANNUAL BETA-GERMPLASM IN A GENETIC-RESOURCES COLLECTION USING RAPD MARKERS

Annual beets in the genus Beta section Beta represent an important gen etic resource. Representative accessions of annual beets from a beet g ermplasm collection were analysed using RAPD to assess the patterns of variation and elationships among them. Using arbitrary primers, marke rs showing variation across accessions were identified. A dendrogram o f similarity was produced using these molecular markers. All the acces sions analysed were classified into three major groups corresponding t o species or subspecies macrocarpa, adanensis and maritima. Macrocarpa was shown to be the most divergent group in this section. Using RAPD molecular markers, it was possible to ascribe an accession to one of t hree taxonomic groups and overcome much of the confusion encountered w hen morphological traits are used for identification. The group of mar itima was found to be more polymorphic than either the group of macroc arpa or adanensis at both accession and subspecies levels.