Genetic Diversity of Some Taxa of Cucurbitaceae Family Based on “ RAPD” Markers

Abstract

To find out the taxonomic relationships , genetic diversity was used RAPD technique among seven taxa of Cucurbitaceae family, including Citrullus  lanatus,Cucumis  melo var. flexuous,Cucumis melo, Cucumis sativus,Cucurbita maxima, Cucurbita pepo, and Lagenaria siceraria, DNA of fresh leaves was extracted using modified protocol of CTAB due the taxa undr study have polyphenols and other secondary metabolites, four primers out of twenty decamer gave reproducible and appeared polymorphism in the RAPD profile, a total two hundred and five bands were produced out of which one hundred and five bands were monomorphic and other were polymorphic , our results arise two main clusters Cucurbita maxima has unique amplified and discriminated from other studied taxa with  , thus they can be a good molecular tool to identification taxa, separated at the similarity value of 0.28, and the second cluster contained two gropes. Citrullus lanatus, Cucurbita pepo showed strongest correlation with highest value similarity among taxa under study was 0.12. furthermore, it could be recommended as a reservoir of alleles useful for breeding programs in parental crosses.

Keywords: Cucurbitaceae molecular, RAPD , genetic diversity , cluster analysis