Evaluation of Wild Almond Genotypes Grown as a Rain-fed Crop in Sulaimani Governorate using RAPD and ISSR Markers

Almond is considered the most common and essential nut grown in the rainfed area. It has many species wildly distributed in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, which are called Chaqala by local people. To understand and improve the characteristics of the cultivated almonds, a comprehensive study of wild almonds in terms of population structure and genetic diversity is needed to transfer new traits into the domesticated almonds. So, twelve different genotypes were collected and analyzed using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. The results revealed polymorphic bands for both markers, the mean value of 5.8 for the RAPD marker and 7.8 for the ISSR marker was also documented. The polymorphic information content (PIC) values were obtained for RAPD primes that range between (0.64-0.85) and ISSR primers were also verified between (0.53-0.91), which shows the discriminatory power of these markers. “Jaccard similarity coefficients” were obtained between 0.34 (G11 vs. G12) to 0.77 (G1 vs. G10), and clustered into four groups with a mean similarity (0.65) for ten RADP markers. For ten ISSR markers, 0.35 (G8, G10) to 0.79 (G6 vs. G11) were also observed, which is clustered into a mean similarity (0.65). Structure analysis of RAPD and ISSR showed two major groups. Overall, these outcomes showed the diversity between the studied genotypes and among groups which are highly important for future almond breeding and conservation programs.