Evaluation of the growth, yield traits and the genetic diversity of some Brassica napus genotypes under Egyptian conditions

BackgroundCanola (Brassica napus L.) is considered an alternate oilseed plant. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate some growth parameters, yield, chemical parameters and genetic diversity among thirteen canola genotypes including a collection of Chinese, German, French, and local genotypes under Egyptian conditions.ResultTrapper genotype recorded the highest values of plant height (47.12 and 89.75 cm) and dry weight/plant (8.54 and 28.19 dry weight/plant) at 60 and 90 days from sowing, respectively. Data from the field experiments showed that significant differences were recorded among tested genotypes for all yield and its component parameters (i.e., plant height (cm), branches/no. plant, siliquas and seed weight (g/plant) and seed oil %. The genetic diversity and the relationships among the thirteen canola genotypes were evaluated utilizing sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) and simple-sequence repeats (SSRs) markers. The allelic frequency of the different SRAP and SSR markers tested has differed among the thirteen canola genotypes. The SRAP and SSR analyses showed 659 out of 742 and 15 out of 45 markers, respectively, were detected as polymorphic markers (88.8% and 33.33%) among the tested wheat cultivars In addition, the polymorphism information content (PIC), marker index (MI) and resolving power (RP) parameters were computed to assess the effectiveness of the markers. The results indicated the occurrence of a considerable genetic variation between Chinese, European and Egyptian genotypes.ConclusionThese markers are of considerable value and can be utilized to screen large canola populations. The results of the comparison between the two molecular markers showed that the most effective marker that showed the genetic diversity between canola genotypes was SRAP (88.8%) polymorphism. It could be concluded that the tested canola genotypes could be cultivated under the Egyptian condition with high performance especially Trapper, Agamax and Topas genotypes. Therefore, it could be suggested that these three genotypes seem to be promising for oil gap reduction and need further evaluation for the expansion under new reclaimed regions.