Genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships among the annual Cicer species as revealed by isozyme polymorphism

There are few estimates of genetic variability within and among populations of the nine annual Cicer species and for the wild species this information is based on few accessions. The present study was undertaken to examine genetic variation within and between annual Cicer species; One hundred and thirty-nine accessions of nine annual Cicer species were used for electrophoretic analysis at ICARDA. High levels of polymorphism in all eight wild annual Cicer species was found. This is in contrast to earlier research which had shown high polymorphism only in C. reticulatum. Cicer reticulatum had the highest proportion of polymorphic loci. However, for the cultigen, among 14 loci assayed, only two were polymorphic, ADH and PGD2. The nine species formed four phylogenetic groups based on the neighbor-joining method. The first group comprised C. arietinum, C. reticulatum and C. echinospermum, the second C. bijugum, C. judaicum and C. pinnatifidum, the third C. chorassanicum and C. yamashitae; and the fourth group consisted of one species, C. cuneatum. The phylogenetic tree developed from the neighbor-joining technique illustrated that C. reticulatum is the probable progenitor of C. arietinum and that C. echinospermum split off from a common ancestor at an earlier stage in the evolutionary history of Cicer. Genetic diversity data showed that the greatest diversity was within C. reticulatum and the lowest with the cultigen, C. arientinum. With the exception of C. reticulatum, genetic diversity increased with genetic distance from the cultigen. Little geographic variation in genetic diversity was found.