Genetic Diversity Among Olive Clones of Zard and Rowghani Cultivars Using Microsatellite Markers

To investigate the genetic diversity among clones of Zard and Rowghani olive cultivars, 29 clones of these cultivars were studied. After assessing 16 quantitative and 19 qualitative characteristics, clones were genetically studied using 18 mocrosatellite markers. In total, 52 alleles were amplified from which 46 alleles were polymorphic. The average number of alleles per locus was 2.944, varied in the range of 2-6. The highest and lowest observed and expected heterozygosity were obtained in the range of 0-0.931 and 0.128-0.781, respectively. The average polymorphism information content (PIC) were 0.366 that the highest value was in locus GAPU89 and the lowest in locus UDO99-043 (0.711- 0.120, respectively). The PIC values showed a direct relation with number of alleles and amount of variation per locus. Cluster analysis using UPGMA method and Jaccard similarity coefficient with value of 54% placed all clones in to five groups. Analysis of molecular variance showed significant variation within and among Zard and Rowghani cultivars (58 and 42%, respectively). In general, the results of this study showed that there was a genetic diversity among clones of Zard and Rowghani cultivars that could be due to the presence of true differences or problems due to homonyms or mislabeling of clones. Since these cultivars are the most important olive cultivars, knowing the genetic differences and detailed morphological studies can be useful for identification of clones of these two cultivars in the early stage of growing in the nurseries, breeding purposes and clonal selection.