Comparison of RAMP and SSR markers for the study of wild barley genetic diversity

Two molecular marker technologies, random amplified microsatellite polymorp hism (RAMP) and simple sequence repeats (SSR), were used to determine genet ic diversity of 27 accessions of the wild barley Hordeum vulgare ssp. spont aneum. 19 primer combinations were used to generate RAMP fragments and 16 S SR loci were analysed. A high level of polymorphism was found with both kin d of markers as revealed by the mean polymorphism information content (PIC) values obtained: 0.838 and 0.855 for RAMP and SSR, respectively. Genetic d issimilarities between genotypes were estimated from RAMP and SSR data. A l ack of correlation was found between both sets of data. This was reflected in the two dendrograms obtained which presented accessions clustered differ ently.:The results suggest that both sets of markers reveal genetic variati on induced by different mechanisms. The dendrogram produced from the RAMP d issimilarity estimates showed most of the groups related to the geographic origin of the accessions.