STUDY OF THE GENETIC-VARIABILITY AND SIMILARITY AMONG AND WITHIN ARACHIS-VILLOSULICARPA, ARACHIS-PIETRARELLII AND ARACHIS-HYPOGAEA THROUGH ISOENZYME ANALYSIS

Arachis villosulicarpa is a perennial species cultivated for its soft and tasty seeds by indigenous inhabitants of the Mate Grosso State, Br azil. Besides A. hypogaea, this species is considered as the only spec ies of Arachis which represents a valuable food source for human consu mption. Due to the lack of knowledge concerning the genetic diversity of A. villosulicarpa, this study was conducted to evaluate the genetic variability of the accessions from the Germplasm Collection of CENARG EN/EMBRAPA (Brasilia, DF, Brazil) and Institute Agronomico (IAC, Campi nas, SP, Brazil). In addition, the genetic similarity between A. villo sulicarpa, the related wild species A. pietrarellii, and the cultivate d peanut A. hypogaea cv. Tatu was evaluated. From the entire sample an alyzed of A. villosulicarpa, the accession from Institute Agronomico s howed the highest indices of diversity for both enzymatic systems anal yzed, pointing this accession as a promising source of genetic variabi lity that must be preserved in the Germplasm Bank. A high level of gen etic similarity was observed between A. pietrarellii and A. villosulic arpa, supporting previous suggestions that A. pietrarellii could be th e ancestral progenitor species of A. villosulicarpa or that both speci es originated from a common ancestor.