Inter Simple Sequence Repeat Analysis of Genetic Diversity and Relationship in Four Egyptian Flaxseed Genotypes

Background: Flaxseed is a highly important industrial and medicinal plant worldwide. Objective: To use inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) technique for making unique fingerprint for the four newly produced genotypes of flax in Egypt. Materials and Methods: The genetic diversity among four promising Egyptian flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) genotypes was premeditated by means of polymerase chain reaction‑based ISSR markers. The phenotypic variation among the four flax genotypes, namely, promising strains 533/39/5/3 (F1), S.402/3/3/7 (F2), S.421/3/6/4 (F3), and S.11 (F4) was studied during the two successive winter seasons of 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 in randomized complete block design through four replications. Results: The promising strain (F3) surpassed the other flax genotypes regarding seed yield/feddan, oil yield/feddan, and oil percentage. Twelve ISSR primers were used for the genetic examination yielding 139 loci, of which 31 were polymorphic. The middling number of amplified loci and the middling number of polymorphic loci per primer were 11.6 and 2.6, correspondingly, while the percent of loci polymorphism ranged from 0.0% to 58.0% with a middling of 21.4% crosswise all the flax genotypes. The more informative primers were GAC (GATA)4 and (GATA)4 GC, while the less informative were (AC)8T and (GT)8G. Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean derived dendrogram clearly discriminated the flax genotypes in three clusters. The Jaccard’s similarity coefficient along with the genotypes ranged from 0.91 to 0.95. Conclusion: This study identified S. 421/3/6/4 (F3) strain to be the mainly assorted genotype and recommended its use in propagation programs and for upward mapping populations.