ASSESSMENT OF MOLECULAR GENETIC DIVERSITY AND POPULATION STRUCTURE OF FENUGREEK (Trigonella foenum-graecum) ACCESSIONS FROM ETHIOPIA USING ISSR MARKERS

Aims: To analyze the genetic diversity of Trigonella foenum-graecum populations collected from Ethiopia using ISSR markers.

Study Design: Experimental.

Place and Duration of Study: DNA extraction and genotyping analysis were conducted at Genetic Laboratory, Department of Microbial, Cellular and Molecular Biology, Addis Ababa University.

Methodology: A total of 76 Fenugreek accessions were obtained from Ethiopia Institute of Biodiversity. Data generated from five ISSR primers were used for computing gene diversity, percent polymorphism, Shannon diversity index and AMOVA. Moreover, the ISSR data was used to construct UPGMA, NJ trees and PCO plot using Jaccard’s coefficient of similarity.

Results: Accessions from Amhara region showed the highest gene diversity (H = 0.32) and Shannon information index (I= 0.49), followed by Oromia with gene diversity and Shannon index values of 0.23 and 0.34, respectively. NJ, UPGMA and PCO results showed strong grouping among accessions collected from the same region with strong affinity among accessions collected from Amhara region.

Conclusion: The three regions of Ethiopia showed different levels of variation with clear grouping based on regions of origin; thus conservation priority should be given for those regions that have high genetic diversity (eg. Accessions from Amhara). This result also indicates the presence of higher genetic diversity that needs conservation attention and sustainable use strategy of Trigonella foenum -graecum in Ethiopia.