Assessment of genetic relationships in durum wheat cultivars using AFLP markers

The genetic relationships were assessed for the first time in Turkish durum wheat cultivars using AFLP markers. In the analysis, 18 AFLP primer combin ations resulted in a total of 189 polymorphic loci. All of the selective pr imers used are Eco and Mse primers with three nucleotide extentions on the 3' ends. The number of polymorphic markers per primer combination ranged fr om 4 to 24. The relationships, among nine winter and six spring type durum wheat cultivars, obtained with various algorithms are in accordance with th e known pedigree information of the cultivars. Based on 'Nei72' genetic dis tance analysis, the most distant two cultivars are 'Berkmen-469' (winter ty pe) and 'Diyarbakir-88' (spring type), and the closest two are 'Selcuklu-97 ' and 'Sofu', with the values of 0.793 and 0.115, respectively. The closest two winter type cultivars are `Akbasak-073-44' and `Kunduru-414-44' (0.128 ).