Evaluation of Genetic Relationship and Identification of Specific Markers for Safflower and its Wild Relatives Existing in Iran

The wild relatives are important sources of genes for some desirable traits and adaptation to environmental conditions that can be exploited to enrich the cultivated safflower gene pool. In this study, genetic relationship and finding chance of specific markers between three species of the genus Carthamus, including tinctorius, lanatus and oxyacantha were evaluated by 9 ISSR primers. The separation of bands was perfomed on agarose and polyacrylamide gels. Using the nine ISSR primers, 169 bands that 96.5% of them showed polymorphism were produced. In general, 40 specific bands were identified that most of them were produced by primers 5 and 6 and C. tinctorius with 20 bands had the highest number. For two species C. lanatus and C. oxyacantha 12 and 8 bands were identified, respectively. In terms of the ability of producing inter-species polymorphism, the average number of polymorphic bands generated by primers was 18.33 and the highest polymorphic information content (PIC) was obtained by primer 1. The results of similarity matrix showed that the highest similarity existed among cultivated safflower and C. oxyacantha. The cluster analysis based on Jacard coefficient with UPGMA separated the samples into three groups which each group were belonged to one species. Using the identified specific markers, the taxonomy and differentiation of the species of Carthamus were feasible with high precision and without the need for morphological evaluations. The results of this research also help to increase the efficiency of gene transfer from wild relatives to cultivated species.