Genetic Diversity in Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) Cultivars Grown in Iran Using SSR and SNP Markers

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.), one of the most expensive spices in the world, is used mainly as food coloring and flavoring in food industry and its effective components are also used in medicine. A collection of twenty-two cultivars of saffron grown in different regions of Iran was screened with 25 SSR and 5 SNP primers in order to determine genetic identities and genetic diversity in these cultivars. On an average, 50 alleles were amplified using SSR primers with scorable fragment sizes ranging from approximately 160 to 400 bp. Among these, 33 alleles were polymorphic thus revealing 72% of polymorphism. The genetic similarity estimated according to SSR data was scaled between 9.5 and 87.8%. In determination of genetic diversity, five polymorphic SNP markers were used. Since SNP markers are mainly bi-allelic, all SNPs showed two alleles only, suggesting the potential of SSR and SNP markers in discriminating among plants of distant genetic backgrounds. Un-weighted pair group method with arithmetic mean clustering grouped the cultivars into four groups. In this study, we tried to expand the genetic diversity of C. sativus in Iran despite their asexual reproduction. Due to the similarity of climatic conditions in Iran, a certain genetic variation was observed in saffron plants. For saffron cultivation and production of high quality crop around the world, research on genetic diversity among the large family of C. sativus adds value this product.