COMPARISON OF RFLP PROBES AND RAPD PRIMERS FOR STUDYING GENETIC DIVERSITY IN BARLEY (HORDEUM-VULGARE L)

The major aim of this experiment was to compare the effectivness of RF LP probes and RAPD primers in evaluating genetic diversity and separat ing different groups of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). For this purpose. five barley varieties were chosen to represent different groups based on growth habit and head type. They were tested parallel with 12 RFLP probes in five enzyme combinations and with 19 RAPD primers. The numb er of DNA products and the frequency of the polymorphic bands generate d by RAPD primers were higher than those obtained with the RFLP probes . The value of the polymorphic bands averaged over all the variety x p rimer or all the variety x probe x enzyme combinations was 3.50 for th e RAPD primers and 0.82 for the RFLP probes. On the other hand RFLP wa s mom informative as there was much lower variation in the estimations of genetic diversity using the individual RFLP probes than using the individual RAPD primers. There was a definite distinction between the different groups of barley with RFLP. while only the variety with two- rowed heads was separated from the others with RAPD. The correlation b etween the JD genetic diversity values generated by the two methods wa s r(2)=0.69. Based on the results. RFLP probes appear more efficient i n establishing a reliable grouping of relatedness between varieties, w hile RAPD primers are more effective than the RFLP probes in giving a good characterisation of individual varieties and breeding materials.