Investigation of genetic variation among some Iranian apple genotypes using RAPD marker

Collection and evaluation of germplasms play an important role in fruit tree breeding programs and different molecular markers have been used for this purpose. RAPD marker is one of the most common markers to identify different apple genotypes and varieties. In this study, the genetic diversity of 23 indigenous apple genotypes collected from Azerbaijan, Central Alborz and Central Zagros regions of Iran was evaluated by 11 RAPD primers serie TIB MOLBIOL and commercial cultivar of Granny Smith was consdered as the control. Data were analyzed using NTSYS software, dendrogram was drawn based on UPGMA results and DICE similarity index was used for measuring genetic similarities. Average number of bands was 10.27 for each primer. In general, samples of each region were separate from other regions and were classified in different clusters. However, some samples were placed in the cluster of other regions that it could be due to genotype transition among areas in the past tense. High polymorphism rates were obtained (68.62%). Based on the results, similarity of samples ranged from 0.378 to 0.723. There was high genetic difference among apple genotypes collected from the studied areas, but low difference was observed among samples of each region. In conclusion, investigation of genetic variation indicated that RAPD marker is suitable approach to determine polymorphic loci and to estimate the genetic distance among apple genotypes and cultivars.