Genetic Diversity Analysis of Mutant Lines of Oat (\u3cem\u3eAvena sativa\u3c/em\u3e L.) Based on RAPD and ISSR Analysis

The genus Avena belongs to the grass family Poaceae and has ploidy levels of diploid, tetraploid and hexaploid with basic chromosome number of 7 (n=7). Oat (Avena sativa L.) is one of the most important forage and feed crops of the world. Oat is used as green fodder, straw, hay or silage. Oat grain makes a good balanced concentrate in the rations for poultry, cattle, sheep and other animals. Green fodder contains about 10 to 13% protein and 30 to 35% dry matter. Despite being high fed fodder crop, it is now gaining importance as food due to its unique and important quality characteristics, particularly the lipid and protein in grains (Ruwali et al., 2013). The existing genetic variability for the traits of agronomic importance, such as plant vegetative cycle, is considered restricted. The narrow of the genetic base in cultivated oat varieties can be a constraint on the efficacy of genotype selection in segregating generations (Carvalho and Federizzi, 1989). Genetic variability in existing oat cultivars is not high enough; it hampers the selection of superior genotypes for breeding. Modifications in the genetic structure of plants and an organisms occurs naturally, though at low frequency, but can be increased through physical or chemical mutagens. Advances in molecular biology have introduced an alternative for variety/genotype identification. The genetic characterization of germplasm helps in their effective conservation and reveals the extent of relationship among the accessions and the estimates of genetic diversity (Singh et al., 2012). The selection of RAPD and ISSR were based on their relative technical simplicity, level of polymorphism they detect, cost effective, easily applicable to any plant species and target those sequence which are abundant throughout the eukaryotic genome and are rapidly evolved. A series of studies have indicated that ISSR could be able to produce more reliable and reproducible bands because of the higher annealing temperature and longer sequence of ISSR primers considered superior than RAPD (Bornet et al., 2001). ISSR has proved to be useful to study of population genetic studies gene mapping germplasm identification and characterize gene bank accessions as well as to identify closely related cultivars (Cortesi et al., 2004). The present research had the following objectives: Assessment of diversity of mutant lines of oat (Avena sativa L.) based on RAPD and ISSR analysis