Genetic diversity in Ethiopian field pea (<i>Pisum sativum</i> L.) germplasm collections as revealed by SSR markers

Abstract

Field pea is an ancient legume crop grown mainly for food in Ethiopia. Even though, there are over one thousand five hundred field pea collections, only a few studies has been conducted on the magnitude and pattern of genetic diversity at molecular level particularly with SSR markers. In this study, genetic diversity of 142 contrasting Ethiopian field pea germplasm were investigated using SSR markers. Euclidean Distance Matrix clustered the collections into seven distinct groups. There were 20 collections in Cluster I, 11 in Cluster II, 5 in Cluster III, 41 in Cluster IV, 17 in Cluster V, 18 in Cluster VI and 30 in Cluster VII. The first, second and third principal components accounted for variation of 76.85%, 6.89% and 6.06%, respectively. There was no definite relationship between pattern of molecular diversity and collection zones, enlightening high levels of intra and inter-genetic diversity of the germplasm. The SSRs used in this study showed relatively higher polymorphic information content (PIC), ranging from 0.33 to 0.95. This indicates that markers used in this study would be useful for genetic diversity analysis of pea. The study exposed that there is wealth of genetic diversity in the gene pool to exploit in field pea breeding and conservation endeavors.