Somaclonal variation of tissue culture regenerated plants of Aloe barbadensis Mill.

Aloe barbadensis is perennial, monocotyledonous, fleshy plant belongs to Aloaceae family. In this study, somoclonal variations of regenerated A. barbadensis plants were investigated. The plantlets of forth subculture transferred to the soil for further study. The genomic DNAs of 40 regenerated plantlets were extracted and genetic variations were studied using SPAR markers including RAPD and ISSR primers. The amounts of Aloe gel also were extracted from regenerated A. vera plants. Average percentage of polymorphism, Shannon index, Nei's genetic diversity and number of effective alleles based on RAPD data were higher than genetic parameters obtained from ISSR data. NJ cluster and STRUCTURE plot based on molecular markers grouped regenerated plants to distinct clusters. AMOVA analysis also showed a significant (P = 0.01) genetic distinction between studied groups. This result also confirmed differentiation of regenerated plants. The amount of Aloe gel in the four groups (based on clustering method) was compared by using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results showed no significant (P = 0.746) differences between the amount of gel in four group. In total, our findings showed somaclonal variations on genomic level while no significant differences were observed in amount of gel among regenerated Aloe plantlets.