ASSESSING GENETIC DIVERSITY OF SOME POTATO (Solanum tuberosum L.) CULTIVARS BY PROTEIN AND RAPD MARKERS

Genetic diversity among nine potato cultivars was investigated using protein and RAPD markers. The electrophoretic pattern of protein analysis produced 28 bands distributed in all cultivars with molecular weights ranging from 21.30 KDa to 112.6 KDa. Some cultivars possessed some bands which were absent in other cultivars. Furthermore, RAPD analysis revealed a high level of polymorphism among the studied genotypes. A total number of 308 amplified bands were generated across the studied genotypes with average of 12.83 bands/primer. SDS-protein marker produced a dendrogram almost similar to that obtained by the RAPD analysis. It could be concluded that, both of SDS-Protein and RAPD markers are equally important for genetic analysis and indicate a considerable amount of genetic diversity between the different studied varieties of potato.