Genetic diversity of some Sudanese date palm cultivars using ISSR Markers and SDS-PAGE

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) family (Arecaceae) is the most important and ancient cultivated species in Sudan. Assessments of genetic diversity in date palm cultivars facilitate effective selection and shorten the breeding time, two techniques (SDS-PAGE) based protein and Inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR-PCR) were used to evaluate genetic diversity of five Sudanese date palm cultivars (Mishriq, Barhi, Khadrawi, Sagay and Khenaizy). The most remarkable result of the current study is that some genotypes revealed a unique profile with the primers and the results were reproducible and this can be used for DNA fingerprinting and cultivars identification. . Fifty nine polymorphic loci, UPGMA ordered the date palm cultivars into two main clusters, Cluster analysis on ISSR and SDS-PAGE data clearly discriminated the high degree of independence between the geographical origin and molecular data which were indicated. Generally, the genotypes which tested revealed that the geographic origin was not affected the cluster divisions.