Investigating morphological characteristics and genetic relationships between two populations of Ferula pseudalliacea in Yazd Province

Ferula pseudalliacea (bitter assafoetida) is a rangeland plant which its gum has a lot of medicinal properties. Since there is no report about evaluating genetic diversity of the valuable species in Iran, this is the first study to investigate genetic diversity of the species in its habitats in Yazd province using several morphological traits and ISSR markers. Among 9 traits, there was significant differences between habitats in terms of canopy cover, stem diameter and weight of 1000 seed. Cluster analysis by morphological traits on the basis of Ward's method classified the samples into three main groups. Among 22 primers, 8 primers reproduced the pattern DNA well and revealed 224 sharp bands. ISSR-16 and ISSR-55 primers had better performance according to the number of bands, PIC and Marker Index. Cluster analysis using Jacquard's coefficient and UPGMA method, grouped two populations into 10 clusters. Principal coordinates analysis showed three components explained 57.94 percent of total variance and separated the populations from each other. These grouping matched relatively with the geographical regions. AMOVA showed that within group genetic diversity (92%) was more than between group diversity (8%). Comparing morphological and molecular dendrograms revealed that there was no similarity between them. The results showed that ISSR marker was suitable to investigate genetic diversity among the studied populations of the species.