Evaluation of genetic diversity in a gene pool contributes to the effective conservation of genetic resources and truncates the breeding programs time. Genetic diversity plays a very important role in reducing genetic vulnerability during breeding process. In the present study, genetic diversity of 96 durum wheat genotypes were evaluated using 12 SCoT primers. Our results revealed that the SCoT primers generated 76 polymorphic bands, with an average of 5.42 fragments per primer. The values of marker index (MI) and polymorphism information content (PIC) indicated that SCoT markers were efficient for detection of genetic diversity in durum wheat germplasm. The average of PIC and MI values for the SCoTmarkers were 0.46 and 2.51, respectively. According to Shannon’s index (I), Nei’s genetic diversity (He), the observed (Na) and effective (Ne) number of alleles, the ICARDA population showed a higher level of genetic diversity than the CIMMYT population. Neighbor-joining clustering method was used to generate a dendrogram and a large number of genotypes were classified in different groups, based on their origins. The result of the principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) was in good agreement with those obtained
from the neighbor-joining clustering. These results revealed a desirable genetic diversity among the investigated lines and confirmed that the SCoT technique is a suitable tool for studying genetic diversity in durum wheat germplasm.

Keywords: Durum wheat, SCoT, genetic diversity, polymorphism

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