ASSESSMENT OF GENOME ORIGINS AND GENETIC DIVERSITY IN THE GENUS ELEUSINE WITH DNA MARKERS

Finger miller (Eleusine coracana), an allotetraploid cereal, is widely cultivated in the arid and semiarid regions of the world. Three DNA m arker techniques, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), ran domly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), and inter simple sequence repe at amplification (ISSR), were employed ro analyze 22 accessions belong ing to 5 species of Eleusine. An 8 probe - 3 enzyme RFLP combination, 18 RAPD primers, and 6 ISSR primers, respectively, revealed 14, 10, an d 26% polymorphism in 17 accessions of E. corncana from Africa and Asi a. These results indicated a very low level of DNA sequence variabilit y in the finger millets but did allow each line to be distinguished. T he different Eleusine species could be easily identified by DNA marker technology and the 16% intraspecific polymorphism exhibited by the tw o analyzed accessions of E. floccifolia suggested a much higher level of diversity in this species than in E. coracana. Between species, E. coracana and E. indica shared the most markers, while E. indica and E. tristachya shared a considerable number of markers, indicating that t hese three species form a close genetic assemblage within the Eleusine . Eleusine floccifolia and E. compressa were found to be the most dive rgent among the species examined. Comparison of RFLP, RAPD, and ISSR t echnologies, in terms of the quantity and quality of data output, indi cated that ISSRs are particularly promising for the analysis of plant genome diversity.