Ubiquitous genetic diversity among and within wild populations of Satureja rechingeri assessed with ISSR markers

Genetic variation within and among populations is the basis for survival of the populations both in short and long term. Thus, studying the plant genetic diversity is essential for any conservation program. In this research, inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) was used to unravel the genetic variability and relationships across 75 wild individuals of Satureja rechingeri. Amplification of genomic DNA using 13 ISSR primers yielded 145 products, of which 115 products were polymorphic revealing 79.09 % polymorphism. The average polymorphism information content value obtained was 0.35. Furthermore, marker index (3.13) and resolving power (10.03) indicated that the ISSR marker was efficient revealing the genetic diversity of S. rechingeri. Averages of Shannon's information index (I) and gene diversity (He) were 0.44 and 0.30, respectively. Analysis of molecular variance showed that the genetic variation was found mainly within populations (89 %), but variance among populations was only 11 %. The marker data indicated that the studied germplasm of S. rechingeri has a high level of diversity, and four reconstructed main clusters were identified by Bayesian analysis. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean dendrogram grouped the samples by origin in most cases which was also confirmed by Bayesian analysis. These results have an important implication for S. rechingeri germplasm characterization, improvement, and conservation.