ARS | Publication request: Characterization of the Population Structures in Wildland Collections of Dalea Ornata and Dalea Searlsiae from the Western U.S.A.

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: February 24, 2009
Publication Date: April 1, 2009
Citation: Bhattarai, K., Bushman, B.S., Johnson, D.A., Carman, J. 2009. Characterization of the Population Structures in Wildland Collections of Dalea Ornata and Dalea Searlsiae from the Western U.S.A. Developing a Successful Native Plant Program Workshop.

Technical Abstract: Dalea ornata and D. searlsiae are non-toxic native legumes that have potential for increasing forage production and forage quality of degraded rangelands in the western U.S.A. It is important to characterize the population structures in both species for developing new plant materials through plant breeding, and for conservation of unique genotypes. To characterize population structures, 24 collections of D. ornata were made across Idaho, Oregon and Washington, and 21 collections of D. searlsiae were made from Utah and Nevada. Amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) were indentified to characterize the genetic structure of both species. A total of 59% within population variation in D. ornata and 71% within population variation in D. searlsiae were detectetd. A neighbor-joining tree was constructed using an average pairwise distance matrix. Results indicated that there were possibly three clusters of populations in D. ornata and three in D. searlsiae. Geographic distance was correlated with genetic distance (r2=0.58, P<0.001), which indicates the role of distance in shaping population structures in both species.