RAPD analysis of genetic relationships of seven flax species in the genus Linum L

The wild progenitor of the cultivated flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) has been long hypothesized to be L. angustifolium Huds., largely from several phytogeographic cytogenetic and phenotypic studies, but no molecular studies on the issue are found. In this study, we genotyped 12 flax accessions representing seven flax species in the genus Linum with 527 RAPD loci from 29 informative RAPD primers and analyzed their genetic relationships with simple matching, Dice's and Jaccard's similarity coefficients. Large RAPD variations were found among the flax species. L. usitatissimum and L. angustifolium had a higher RAPD similarity than the other pairs of flax species and these two species were consistently clustered in the same group with all of the similarity coefficients used. This molecular finding provides an additional support for the hypothesis of L. angustifolium as the wild progenitor of cultivated flax.