Using Morphological Charachters and ISJ Markers for Assessment of Genetic Diversity among Some Rice Genotypes

the two rice growing seasons of 2014 and 2015 at the experimental farm of Rice Research and Training Center.There were significant differences among the genotypes for all traits, indicating high genetic divergence among ricegermplasm. The 24 studied genotypes were divided to 11 clusters. Cluster III included the highest number of genotypes,followed by cluster X which included four genotypes. According to the rank for desirable traits among all clusters meanvalues, hybridization of IR 68011-15-1-1, KATY of cluster VI with promising genotypes of cluster VII (moroberekan),cluster IX (IR 67954-46-1-3-2) and cluster XI (IR 68167-28-3-2-2, IR 69432-54-1-1-2-2 (NPT)) may be recommended asstarted materials for breeding program, in order to isolating transgressive segregants lines. Twelve primers of intron-exonsplice junction (ISJ) were utilized in this study, out of 89 bands were detected and 44 bands showed polymorphic. Thegenetic similarity between genotypes ranged from 0.794 to 0.955 with an average similarity index of 0.873. Clusteranalysis based on Dice's similarity coefficient using UPGMA procedure divided the studied rice genotypes into six majorclusters. Furthermore, some genotypes located in one cluster alone based on either morphological or moleculardendrograms, such as genotypes number 6 (Moroberekan) and 7 (Katy).