Genetic diversity of oat accessions revealed by SSR markers

Oat is an important cereal crop for the food and feed industries. Genetic resources of oat are the basic materials for sustainable breeding programs. Microsatellites (SSR) are a useful tool for understanding the genetic background of oat germplasm resources. We used 83 SSR primer pairs to assess the genetic diversity of 286 oat accessions from five countries. The results indicated the presence of considerable variation among accessions. The number of alleles per SSR locus ranged from 2 to 8, with an average of 3.49; allelic frequencies ranged from 0.002 to 0.709; Nei’s genediversity was 0.67, ranging from 0.44 to 0.85; and polymorphism information content (PIC) values ranged from 0.37 to 0.83. Genetic distance estimated by the Jaccard model was compared between accession groups as well as among all accessions using all marker alleles. The principle coordinates analysis based on genetic dissimilarity also revealed distinct groups of accessions. We concluded that SSR markers are effective for identification of oat germplasm resources and use of germplasm from North America and Asia should lead to significant progress in Mongolian oat breeding programs.