Genetic variability of Manfalouty pomegranate (Punica ………granatum L.), the most distributed commercial cultivar in Egypt, was investigated at a private farm located in El-Badari – Assuit governorate, Egypt. A preliminary surveys for 5 years in the field among Manfalouty cultivar was done and resulted in the selection of four promising pomegranate genotypes. Those genotypes proved to have desired characteristics and were given different names by local farmers i.e. (1) Abo- Shelh, (2) Almekhtat, (3) Abo-Shoka, and (4) Genah – Aldabor. The selected genotypes were characterized with molecular genetics identification using RAPD-PCR analysis. Polymorphism was detected among the selected genotypes by RAPD primers using five arbitrary primers for the four selected genotypes in comparison with Manfalouty cultivar. The percentage of polymorphism revealed by different primers ranged from 50% to 87.5% with an average of 64.44%. The UPGMA analysis of genetic distance of the four selected pomegranate genotypes and Manfalouty cultivar showed that, the highest value of similarity index was (0.86) occurred between Manfalouty cultivar and genotype (no.2) while the lowest value of similarity index was (0.67) occurred between the cultivars genotype (no.2) and genotype (no.4). From this study, we confirmed that diversity among the fruit characteristics by indication of genetic relatedness, while molecular tools are valuable to study such similarities.
Generally, it be can concluded from this study that, RAPD markers were able to distinguish the genetic diversity among the different pomegranate genotypes.