Investigation of genetic diversity among Pistachio vera in the khorasan by using morphological characters and RAPD molecular marker

Pistachio has a high genetic diversity because of dioeciously and heterozygous nature. In this study, morphological and phonological characters of 40 male and female genotypes, so RAPDs marker of 38 male and female genotyps from Faizabad region of Khorasan province were evaluated. Results showed that some characters such as tree canopy, annual growth, winter bud density and the time of flowering and also leaf bud burst with high coefficients of variation showed high diversity. The cluster analysis of morphological data divided the female and male genotypes into 3 groups. Among the female genotypes, some of them such as ‘Badami Sefid1’, ‘Sefid Sabuni2’, ‘Garme Siah’ and ‘Ghermez Dorosht Zoodras’ were the best genotypes, in point of split shells, size of nut, protein and lipids percentage of kernel. In RAPDs experiment fifteen primers were used that produced 123 bands which among them 115 were polymorphic even between two genotypes. Size of produced bands was in range of 200-300 bp. The highest number bands were 12 and achieved by BC18 primer. Means of polymorphism among used primers was 92.83 percentages. Total resolving power was 74.54 with the mean of 4.97. Primer BC12 RAPD showed the most resolving power equal to 7.89. Based on similarity matrices the lowest genetic similarity (0.18) was between ‘Garme Siah’ and ‘Sefid Sabuni1’ genotypes and the highest (0.70) detected between ‘Badami Sefid3’ and ‘Genotype7’. Cluster analysis based on Dice similarity coefficients and UPGMA method were divided the genotypes into 8 subclusters at similarity level of 0.41, which ‘Sefid Sabuni1’ and ‘Genotype4’ genotypes of the other genotypes was separated individually. Results showed that there are high genetic diversity in the studied genotypes.