Genetic variation of Prosopis juliflora in Khuzestan province by CDDP method

Mesquite (Prosopis juliflora) belonging to Fabaceae that is originally a Native American plant, was brought to Iran to develop urban green spaces in the past decades. At present, it is an alien invasive plant and occupies a wide range of natural habitats in Khuzestan province (southwestern Iran). The aim of the present study was the assessment of genetic diversity in some populations of this species in Khuzestan province using Conserved DNA Derived Polymorphism (CDDP) molecular markers. Twenty samples from four distinct populations were evaluated using 20 CDDP primers. The resulted data were analyzed by NTSYS, Popgene and GenAlex softwares. The primers generated 212 bands, from which 194 bands (91.94%) were polymorphic. The highest and lowest means of genetic diversity were 0.221 and 0.114 for the populations of Khorramshahr and Ahvaz, respectively. Clustering analysis using Jaccard's similarity coefficient and UPGMA method classified the samples in two separate groups at 22% similarity level, reflecting their genetic variations. Molecular Variance Analysis also showed that the genetic diversity in intra-population was higher (51%) than inter-population (49%). This study indicated the high potentiality of the CDDP marker for assessing genetic diversity of Prosopis juliflora populations.