Abstract

Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is an indigenous cereal crop widely cultivated and utilized in Ethiopia. Its grain provides healthy and nutritious human diet while the straw is used as livestock feed. This study was designed to analyze the genetic diversity and population structure of 189 tef genotypes including improved varieties, breeding lines and pure lines derived from germplasm collections using 10 SSR primer pairs. All studied primer pairs were polymorphic and generated a total of 168 alleles with the number of alleles; polymorphic information content and gene diversity per locus ranging from 2 to 26, 0.30 to 0.92 and 0.38 to 0.90 respectively. North Shewa and West Shewa populations had the highest gene diversity unlike breeding lines which had lowest values of all genetic parameters. Analysis of molecular variance revealed 55%, 42% and 3% of the total variation due to variation within individual, among individuals and among populations, respectively. Cluster analysis grouped both populations and individual genotypes into five major clusters. Structure bar-plot also inferred five gene pools, but with high level of admixtures. This study generally revealed substantial variations among the studied genotypes to be used in future tef improvement.

Keywords: Eragrostis tef ; Genetic diversity; SSR markers; Population structure