Assessment of Genetic Diversity in Iranian Apple Genotypes Using SSR Markers

Various markers can be used for accurate identifications of plant genotypes and cultivars. Since microsatellite markers of simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are abundant and reliably reproducible, 14 pairs were used for evaluating polymorphic levels among 33 apple genotypes. All 14 pairs of primers had high degrees of polymorphism, ranging from three alleles (in the case of primers CH01h01 and CH02d12) to 12 alleles in primer CH05d04. In total, 83 polymorphic alleles appeared in these 14 SSR loci (with an average of 5.92 alleles per gene locus), and the polymorphic information content averaged 0.71. Dendrograms for molecular data were drawn based on the UPGMA method, and genotypes were divided into six main groups. The genotypes of Shahrood 20 and Shahrood 21 (95%) had the highest similarity with each other, while Shahrood 3 and Palestinian Malayer (14%) had the lowest. Principal component analysis confirmed the results of cluster analysis to determine relationships between the genotypes.