Sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) of wild emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides) in Israel and its ecological association Pan Dong a , Yu-Ming Wei a , Guo-Yue Chen a , Wei Li a , Ji-Rui Wang a , Eviatar Nevo b , You-Liang Zheng a, c, * a Triticeae Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University, Yaan, Sichuan 625014, China b Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel c Key Laboratory of Southwestern Crop Germplasm Utilization, Ministry of Agriculture, Ya’an, Sichuan, 625014, China article info Article history: Received 14 July 2009 Accepted 12 December 2009 Keywords: Genetic diversity Population structure Wild emmer wheat SRAP Israel ecological relationship abstract Genetic diversity and population structure of 15 wild emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides) populations from Israel were detected by 30 sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) primer pairs. Two hundred and forty four fragments out of 438 were polymorphic. The proportion of polymorphic loci (P), the genetic diversity (He), and Shannon’s infor- mation index were 0.557, 0.198, and 0.295, respectively. The population Amirim had the highest genetic variation, whereas the population of Tabigha had the lowest genetic variation. The hierarchical analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed that most of the variation was presented within populations. The value of genetic distance (D) between the populations varied from 0.027 to 0.165 with an average of 0.079, and the estimates of genetic distance were geographically independent based on the Mantel test (r ¼ 0.105, P ¼ 0.168). A total of 30 significant (P < 0.05) correlations were detected between 14 SRAP loci and 12 ecogeographic factors. Crown Copyright Ó 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) is designed to amplify open reading frames (ORFs) (Li and Quiros, 2001) based on two special primer pairs. The forward primers preferentially amplify exonic regions and the reverse primers preferentially amplify intronic regions and regions with promoters. Compared with other molecular markers, SRAP markers are more reproducible, stable, not complicated, and can be used in different materials according to its unique primer design. As a result, SRAPs have been adapted for a variety of research purposes, including germplasm identification, linkage map construction, gene tagging and mapping, map-based cloning, and evolutionary study (Li and Quiros, 2001; Ferriol et al., 2003; Budak et al., 2004; Lin et al., 2004, 2009; Qiao et al., 2007; Sun et al., 2007; Mutlu et al., 2008; Han et al., 2008a). About the genetic diversity, SRAPs have been demonstrated to be very powerful in many plant species, including Brassica (Li and Quiros, 2001), Cucurbita (Ferriol et al., 2003), buffalograss (Budak et al., 2004), cotton (Lin et al., 2004), PCNA persimmons (Guo and Luo, 2006), Porphyra (Qiao et al., 2007), sugar beet (Nagl et al., 2007), pea (Esposito et al., 2007), tree peony (Han et al., 2008b), Carthams tinctorius (Peng et al., 2008), also in the parasite (Alasaad et al., 2008; Li et al., 2009), and fungi (Sun et al., 2006; Yu et al., 2008). * Corresponding author at: Triticeae Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya’an, Sichuan 625014, China. Tel.: þ86 835 2882 620; fax: þ86 835 2883 153. E-mail address: ylzheng@sicau.edu.cn (Y.-L. Zheng). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biochemical Systematics and Ecology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biochemsyseco 0305-1978/$ – see front matter Crown Copyright Ó 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bse.2009.12.015 Biochemical Systematics and Ecology 38 (2010) 1–11