Determination of Genetic Diversity Between Eggplant and Its Wild Relatives

Abstract

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) is an important crop and has a growing reputation and is now cultivated globally. It is a valuable member of the human diet in Asia, especially in India, which is a primary diversity center of the species. Turkey is the first in Europe and is in the first five countries around the world in terms of eggplant production. The Solanaceae family to which S. melongena belongs is an important family, too. Tomato, potato, tobacco and petunia are some example species of the Solanaceae family. This important family with 3000-4000 species shows a high level of morphological diversity which results in confusion about its systematics and this diversity is at the level of genera, species and cultivars. The aims of the studies reported in this thesis were to analyze genetic diversity of Turkish eggplants and wild relatives in separate studies with different molecular tools. To reveal genetic diversity among eggplant cultivars grown in Turkey, the AFLP marker system was applied to the sample genotypes. For the investigation of genetic variation between S. melongena and its wild relatives, though, the SSR marker system was used. For the AFLP data for Turkish eggplants, an r value of 0.97 was obtained which was in the best scale. Eigen values reported here were also informative. These results showed that the first component analysis explained 64.34% of the variation between samples. For three axes, though, a total of 72.21% variation was explained. According to the statistical results of SSR analysis, the r value of Solanum species. genotypic data was found to be 0.88. That means the correlation between sample genotypic data and dendrogram was found to be high. Due to the other statistical results which were Eigen values explained 46.12% of genotypes for first component analysis. With a total value of 55.28%, the 47 different genotypes were explained by the three principle component axes. The results of AFLP studies showed that although a high similarity value was observed, diversity was detectable among the accessions. The results of SSR studies were also meaningful with their concordance with previous studies and observed diversity with a good fit to statistical results.