Study on morphological variation of Salvia mirzayanii natural populations

Salvia mirzayanii Rech. F. & Esfand. is an endemic medicinal species to Iran belonging to the Lamiaceae family. In order to study the genetic diversity of some natural populations of S. mirzayanii using morphological markers, 132 individual plants belonging to the six populations were collected at the flowering stage in their natural habitat of Hormozgan and Fars provinces. To evaluate the morphological traits, 15 characteristics such as plant height, leaf length and width, plant dry weight, number of branches and number of leaves per node were investigated. Data belonging to the six populations were analyzed based on Nested ANOVA. There were significant differences among the populations in terms of all traits (P< 0.01, 0.05). Genetic diversity indices such as Margalef, Shannon-Weiner, and Simpson, revealed that all the six populations had high intra-population diversity. Using factor analysis based on verimax rotation method, four main factors were identified that explained 96.34% of the total variation among 132 genotypes. Based on Ward's cluster analysis, the six natural populations were divided into four independent groups. The two populations of Bastak and Sirmand were placed in cluster1, Tang-e-Zagh and Sarchahan populations were placed in cluster2, and two other populations of DaghFino and Khonj were placed in clusters 3 and 4, respectively. Evaluation of existing phenotypic diversity can provide valuable information in term of management of S. mirzayanii germplasm and can be useful in identifying suitable populations for breeding improve varieties of this species.