Patterns of Phenotypic Variation in a Germplasm Collection of Carthamus tinctorius L. from the Middle East

Abstract

Phenotypic diversity was assessed for quantitative and qualitative traits in a salt-tolerant subset of the international safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) germplasm collection originating from 11 countries in three regions (Central Asia, Southwest Asia and Africa) of the Middle East. Phenotypically, the germplasm, among and within regions, was highly variable, especially for rosette-and yield-related traits. Frequency of desirable variants of seven agronomically important traits ranged from 14% for long rosette period to 50% for no or few spines. Level of population differentiation was high for number of capitula per plant (30%), whereas most traits partitioned their diversity (82-87%) within populations. Region-specific nonrandom associations among sets of qualitative traits and the existence of broad morphological and phenotypic diversity in this germplasm were supported by the large number of log-linear models needed to describe qualitative trait associations, the high number of principal components needed to account for total variability, and the low discriminatory power of phenotypic traits among germplasm from regions and countries in the Middle East. These results suggest that adaptation of the species to the wide spatial and temporal variation in the Middle East resulted in a multitude of ecotypes and in enormous amount of local variation. A multivariate selection criterion for high biological and seed yield, long rosette period and no or few spines identified five accessions from Southwest Asia that can be introduced into subsistence farming systems as a multipurpose crop under saline agriculture.

Relationships among different geographical groups, agro-morphology, fatty acid composition and RAPD marker diversity in Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius)

“…African accessions also lay in the same main cluster, which supports the studies by Johnson et al (1999) and Jaradat and Shahid (2006) that reported the proximity of African accessions to the Mediterranean group. The East Asian group stood out as the most distant.…”

“…However, the present germplasm did not contain high oleic acid types (Table 2) and, therefore, it is not directly comparable to the core and non-core accessions described by Johnson et al (1999). Other studies (Ashri 1975;Jaradat and Shahid 2006) reported comparable results, showing a wide range of variation in safflower collections for agro-morphological traits as a result of human and natural selection. This suggests good potential for selection in a breeding program (Pascual-Villalobos and Albuquerque 1996).…”

“…He reasoned that this could be due to unspecificities of variety origins, either due to inclusion of recently naturalized varieties, the discrepancy between phytogeographical regions and political boundaries, or unreported exchange of seeds between regions by nomads, armies, or merchants. Broad diversity of safflower accessions within large regions is reasonable given the variability of climatic and agricultural conditions, as well as safflower's traditional mode of cultivation, in small plots, which could have fragmented the gene pool into small populations, in which natural and human selection, and genetic drift could have operated (Ashri 1975;Ashri et al 1975;Jaradat and Shahid 2006).…”

“…Characterization of safflower germplasm so far included agro-morphological studies (Khan et al 2004;Dwivedi et al 2005;Jaradat and Shahid 2006), biochemical analyses (Fernández-Martínez et al 1993;Pascual-Villalobos and Albuquerque 1996;Zhang 2001) and, recently, molecular markers have been applied (Sehgal and Raina 2005;Johnson et al 2007;Yang et al 2007). Nevertheless, the RAPD study by Sehgal and Raina (2005) included 14 Indian cultivars only.…”

Study of genetic diversity in safflower genotypes using agro-morphological traits and RAPD markers

“…Genetic diversity of some safflower germplasm has been previously investigated based on the agromorphological traits (Ashri 1975;Jaradat and Shahid 2006), biochemical traits (Han and Li 1992;Fernandez-Martinez et al 1993) and molecular markers including isozymes (Han and Li 1992), RAPDs (Maali Amiri et al 2001;Sehgal and Raina 2005;Vilatersana et al 2005), ISSRs (Ash et al 2003;YuXia et al 2007) and AFLPs (Sehgal and Raina 2005).…”