Journal of Crop Breeding

Cadmium is a toxic unnecessary element for humans and plants which is easily absorbed by plants. Genetic variation in cadmium accumulation provides an opportunity for breeding programs to select genotypes with low cadmium. Due to the high cost of plant tissue analysis to determine the amount of cadmium, use of markers to make efficient selection of low cadmium accumulating genotypes is an effective way. Therefore, to evaluate the effectiveness of AFLP and RAPD markers for identification and determination of cadmium accumulation characteristics in wheat, an experiment was conducted with two cadmium levels including zero (control) and 0.25 mM CdCl₂ on 45 wheat genotypes. AFLP analysis using six combinations of primers produced 328 bands with an average of 54.66 bands per primer combination which 207 of these bands were polymorphic. In RAPD analysis, six primers with appropriate banding patterns out of 50 primers were used to evaluate all the genotypes. These primers produced 31 polymorphic bands with 5.16 bands for each primer. Associations between molecular markers and traits were assessed by multiple regression analysis. According to the results of regression analysis, 113 and 77 informative markers were detected at control and 0.25 mM Cd levels, respectively. Some of the markers were significantly associated with more than one trait. The results of this study provide useful preliminary information for indirect selection of traits by associated markers.