Study of resistance gene analoguses related to NBS-LRR family in different almonds cultivars

Almond (Prunus dulcis) as a fruit trees has one of the highest production among nut products. At the moment, the use of resistant cultivars is one of the main strategies to control and manage plants diseases. Plants use different defense mechanisms against pathogens. These mechanisms are activated by R genes. In this study resistance gene (R-gene) analogues have been studied in different Iranian almonds cultivars. In this study, 20 different Iranian almonds cultivars have been collected from almond collection and DNA was extracted using CTAB method. Four set of degenerate primers from conserved NBS (nucleotide binding site) motifs were selected. Totally, 90 resistance-gene analogues were isolated and sequenced. The results of this study shows the NBS-LRR resistance gene analogues family possessed variation between different almond cultivars that 55% of them were similar to known disease resistance genes or proteins and 45% of them were new analogues, what proof the nessesory of comprehensive studies to identify new sources of resistance to diseases in Iranian almond cultivars. Sequences of linked proteins mainly were similar to resistance gene analogues (RGA) related to root knot nematode. Phylogenetic analysis showed that differenant resistance genes analogues of almonds cultivars in Iran distribiuted in 8 main groups. From our results, we concluded that some of RGA in this study are new and could be used in resistance genes mapping in future research.