Assessment of morphological and molecular variation in local olive (Olea europaea L.) in the Northern part of Iran

Abstract

Iran is known as one of the origins of olive in the world with many different olive cultivars, mainly in the north. Eighty eight accessions belong to 4 main olive cultivars were investigated by 21 morphological characters and 11 ISSR markers. Analyses of morphological characters revealed the existence of high genetic variability among cultivars. Based on both morphological and ISSR cluster analyses, 88 accessions were grouped in five distinct clusters. The ISSR primers produced 77 polymorphic bands. AMOVA showed significant difference in both between and within olive cultivars. The highest and lowest coefficient of Nei’s genetic distance was observed in ‘Mari’ and ‘Shengeh’ (0.105) and ‘Zard’ and ‘Rowghani’ (0.061), respectively. In both morphological and ISSR data analyses, ‘Mari’ showed the highest homogeneity. The olive cultivars were not clustered based on their geographical origin.

Keywords

• genetic diversity
• ISSR
• PIC
• polymorphism