Investigation of genetic diversity of 20 cultivars of Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium Ramat.) using SSR molecular markers

Awareness of genetic diversity is a prerequisite and the first step in plant breeding. In this regard, the present study investigates the genetic diversity of 20 cultivars of Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium. Ramat) using SSR molecular markers. The markers used in total were able to create 731 bands with sizes from 128 to 404 bp. The number of bands in different primers were range from 22 to 96 bands in the cultivars studied. The average number of effective alleles for 12 primers was 1.25 alleles with the highest number of effective alleles in five primers JH09, JH52, JH72, JH30 and JH47 with 2 alleles. The polymorphism of the bands in the cultivars were high (100%). The PIC in the cultivars under study were from 0.26 to 0.50, respectively, and related to the JH42 and JH31 primers. The dendrogram obtained from the cluster analysis of cultivars in a similarity coefficient of 0.61 placed the cultivars in the seven main clusters. The analysis of the main components showed that the first six components justify more than 60% of the total variation. Overall, six primers JH09, JH11, JH52, JH72, JH30 and JH47 can be introduced as useful and desirable for separation of genotypes and cultivars of Chrysanthemum.