Thrwat Saleem Redwan
General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research، Lattakia research center. 
Faculty of Agriculture, Tishreen University
2015

Abstract

This study was conducted during the period 2012- 2014.Forty-five wild genotypes of Lavandula spp. Collected from north Lattakia, and 3 genotypes of Lavandula officinalis, planted in the Agricultural Research Center,were used in this study.
Genotypes were submitted to morphological and molecular characterization. In addition to aromatic content evaluation.
The geographic survy proved that wild genotypes exist only on the western north part of Lattakia, in five regions: Kassab, Albaseet, Alsrskiea, Solas, Mashqita.
The Morphological characterization with 26 traits showed a clear diffrrence between wild planted of Lavandula ssp. The highest differences were related to flowers and fruits characters. A dendrogram based on the morphological data showed clear separation between wild and planted genotypes, and reached 98% when the fruits characters were compared. The difference between wild genotypes was negligible especially when canopy, seeds and fruits characters were compared.
The resulted concerning the cotent of aromatic oil in flowers showed significant difference between local (up to 1.4%) and introduced (2.02%) genotypes on one hand, and within local genotypes on the other hand, where the highest cotent(1.4%) was detected in genotypes from Mashqita.
Total DNA was extracted from young leaves and analyzed with 16 RAPD primers, fourteen primers produced 107 fragments and showed efficiency in detecting genetic variation between the wild and introduced genotypes. Only thirty-nine fragments were polymorphic and allowed to detect an average of genetic variability equal to 0.22. The dendrogram established with the molecular data displayed two distinct clusters. The genetic distance between wild and L. officinalis genotypes was 0.65 while this value reached 0.31 among the local genotypes.
Our results proved the efficiency of RAPD markers in detecting the genetic varability between and within species of Lavandula and to estimate their genetic relationship.
Key words: Wild local genotypes, Lavandula, Aromatic cotent, Morphological characterization, Molecular characterization, RAPD markers.