New morphotypes structuring Medicago minima (L.) Bartal. populations in various climate environments
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
New morphotypes structuring Medicago minima (L.) Bartal. populations in various climate environments Kabtni Souhir . Sdouga Dorra . Hakim Lamia . Trifi-Farah Neila . Marghali Sonia
Received: 4 October 2019 / Accepted: 21 April 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Medicago minima (L.) Bartal. is a member of the Fabaceae family, which grows in arid and semiarid environments. This species is of great interest, especially from agronomy, however, so little research devoted to this subject. This study aimed to investigate the morphological diversity of the Tunisian M. minima populations using the agro morphological markers. Statistically confirmed, our results suggest the presence of a large variability between all M. minima populations. The inter-populations differences are significant for almost of the pheno-morphological and agronomic studied traits. According to the PCA analysis (based on the individual data of 300 plants) and the HCPC analysis (based on population data), M. minima plants could be classified into three groups. The shape of the plant, internode length, date of blooming are a useful trait to distinguish and classify M. minima plants into three groups (variety or forms). This considerable variation indicates a high genetics potential for selection. Mainly, this study reveals pheno-morphological traits that discriminate M. minima varieties and highlight their agronomic traits. These results could be useful for the botanical Kabtni S. Sdouga D. Hakim L. Trifi-Farah N. Marghali S. (&) Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, Immunology, and Biotechnology, Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Campus Universitaire, 2092 Tunis, Tunisia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
description for the conservation of M. minima’s natural resources. It can also provide valuable information for breeding purposes. Keywords Diversity Medicago minima Morphotype Selection Conservation
Introduction In terms of number species, legumes represent the third largest family of flowering plants on the planet with more than 19,000 species classified into 745 genera (Judd et al. 2008). The Medicago genus is one of the leguminous plants, which can be annual or perennial. Annual medics can produce high-quality forage (Muir et al. 2005). The difference between annual and perennial species is that the former has a numerous seed bank (Harper and White 1974) that allows for survival during unfavorable climatic periods (Cavers 1983). It is a smart nature strategy to avoid species extinction. Otherwise, Medicago species are recognized as a food source rich in protein, fiber, and energy. It is distributed in the Mediterranean Basin, West Africa, the South-western Australian and the South American rangelands (Brundu et al. 2004). Its socio-economic advantage appears in its capability to fix the atmospheric nitrogen via a symbiosis relationship with rhizobium bacteria (Graham and Vance
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Genet Resour Crop Evol
2003).
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