Evaluation of genetic diversity and genetic characteristics of some of Hashemi rice cultivars using morphological traits and microsatellite markers

Rice is the most important source of food for more than half of the world's population. Currently, Hashemi rice has the highest area under rice in Guilan province and is better than other varieties in terms of cooking quality and customer satisfaction. In this study, for the study the genetic diversity of 20 Hashemi cultivars genotypes and two varieties as control (Hashemi and gowhar- introduced by the Rice Research Institute of Iran), 21 polymorphic markers, morphological traits and grain quality were used. The results showed that all of studied traits had a significant difference at 1% level. The cluster analysis with the help of software R divided the studied genotypes into four groups. Based on the data from 21 markers, in total, 96 alleles were detected with the average of 4.57 alleles per locus. The highest number of alleles was observed in markers RM19 and RM1109 with 6 alleles and minimum number of alleles in marker RM249 with 3 alleles. The average number of effective alleles was 3.97. The RM249 had the lowest value of 2.25 and the RM413 and RM1109 markers had the highest values of 5.65 and 5.21, respectively. The average value of polymorphic information content (PIC) was 0.69 for SSR markers. Based on cluster analysis by using Jaccard coefficient and UPGMA method on the SSR markers, the genotypes were grouped in 4 clusters. In general, the results of cluster analysis of morphological traits and microsatellite markers were in good agreement and they could group individuals based on their geographical origin. Understanding the genetic diversity can further help to breeders in their breeding programs, especially in purification the best genotypes and preserving these genotypes in Iran's rice gene bank.