Morphological and Molecular Characterization of Quinoa Genotypes

Quinoa cultivation has expanded from South America to many countries because of its wide adaptability and nutritional value. We evaluated 32 introduced quinoa genotypes using 17 qualitative and 11 quantitative traits under Saudi Arabia conditions during the 2018–2019 season. The quinoa genotypes showed considerable variation during the vegetative and maturity stages. Plant height values varied between 60 and 18 cm, and maturity ranged from 98 to 177 days. Leaf shapes were rhomboidal or triangular, with dentate or serrate margins. Green was the standard color for leaves and panicles at the flowering stage. The leaf granule colors were white, purple, and white-red. At 150 units of the Euclidean distance, the genotypes aggregated into four major groups based on their morphological traits. Twenty-one sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) primer pair combinations generated 75 amplified fragments (alleles), with a mean of 3.57 alleles per primer pair combination. Unweighted Pair-Group Method with Arithmetic means (UPGMA) clustering analysis showed that the quinoa genotypes were grouped based on origin or according to genetic background. Genotypes from South America presented higher mean values for the average number of alleles, Shannon index (0.411), gene diversity (0.271), and polymorphic percentage (83.95). Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed that most of the genetic variation was because of differences within populations (86%). The wide variability of the genotypes studied herein is of great importance for quinoa breeders.