ANALYSIS OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN GENUS AVENA

Wild oats is the worst weed of wheat worldwide but, the oats are also used as food for people and as feed for animals, especially poultry and horses. Straw of oats is used as animal bedding and sometimes as animal feed. To improve yield and quality of oat, presence of sufficient genetic diversity in the germplasm is an important prerequisite. Due to its nutritional importance 10 varieties of oat were used for genetic diversity analysis. This study will provide a new trend in research that oat can be used as cultivated crop varieties and it has sufficient diversity for improvement like other major crops. On an average, 30.3 alleles per genotype were amplified using RAPD primers. Mean genetic distance estimates ranged from 15 to 81%. Size of scorable fragments ranged from approximately 250 to 1000 bp. A high level of genetic dissimilarity (GD= up to 81%) was estimated among the 10 genotypes. Entries were grouped in clusters using cluster analysis. On the basis of dendrogram, most diverse genotypes were identified for future breeding programs.