PLANT CELL BIOTECHNOLOGY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

In this study we investigated the ISSR and RAPD polymorphisms in date palm cultivars collected from Bou-Saada oasis, located at the bases of the Ouled Nail Range of the Saharan Atlas of Algeria. Both markers resulted in high and comparable levels of polymorphisms; around 75% polymorphic loci were detected among 151 ISSR and 198 RAPD alleles. The contribution of RAPD and ISSR markers to total gene diversity was 0.225 and 0.220 and to Shannon's Information index was 0.344 and 0.337, respectively. At group levels, soft, dry and median types of cultivars characterized by presence of unique alleles to each group noticeable in considerable differences in gene diversity as well as Shannon's Information indices. However, the amount of shared alleles within groups resulted in strong variation (100% for ISSR and 98% for RAPD) explained within groups of individual cultivars rather than among groups. Generally, RAPD and ISSR markers resulted in disparate clustering patterns, however, both markers configured the close relationship between Rotabaya and Ghars cultivars with 84% bootstrap value (BV; RAPD) and 63% BV (ISSR). The cultivar, Baarit- djemal is strongly identified as possible progenitor of the sampled male tree. Baarit-djemal cultivar and the male tree found closely related with BV equaled to 90% for polymorphism of combined markers, 71% with RAPD markers and 50% with ISSR markers.