The comparison of polymorphism among Avenaspecies revealed by retrotransposon-based DNA markers and soluble carbohydrates in seeds

Here, we compared the polymorphism among 13 Avenaspecies revealed by the iPBS markers and soluble carbohydrate profiles in seeds. The application of seven iPBS markers generated 83 bands, out of which 20.5% were polymorphic. No species-specific bands were scored. Shannon’s information index (I) and expected heterozygosity (He) revealed low genetic diversity, with the highest values observed for A. nuda(I= 0.099; He= 0.068). UPGMA clustering of studied Avenaaccessions and PCoA results showed that the polyploidy level is the main grouping criterion. High-resolution gas chromatography revealed that the studied Avenaaccessions share the same composition of soluble carbohydrates, but significant differences in the content of total (5.30–22.38 mg g−1of dry weight) and particular sugars among studied samples were observed. Sucrose appeared as the most abundant sugar (mean 61.52% of total soluble carbohydrates), followed by raffinose family oligosaccharides (31.23%), myo-inositol and its galactosides (6.16%), and monosaccharides (1.09%). The pattern of interspecific variation in soluble carbohydrates, showed by PCA, was convergent to that revealed by iPBS markers. Thus, both methods appeared as a source of valuable data useful in the characterization of Avenaresources or in the discussion on the evolution of this genus.