Genetic diversity and relationships among Iris aucheri genotypes determined via ISSR and CDDP markers

Iris aucheri, which belongs to the Iridaceae family, is one of the most important wild ornamental plants distributed widely throughout the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) (north of Iraq). The genetic diversity of this plant species is partly known. Thus, 10 inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers and 10 conserved DNA derived polymorphism (CDDP) markers were utilized to evaluate the genetic diversity and perform population analysis of 48 wild Iris aucheri genotypes from five locations in the IKR. The results revealed 108 and 134 polymorphic bands for the ISSR and CDDP markers, respectively. The mean values of the number of observed alleles (Na), effective number of alleles (Ne), Shannon’s information index (I), expected heterozygosity or gene diversity (He), unbiased expected heterozygosity (uHe), and polymorphic information content (PIC) were 1.71, 1.43, 0.39, 0.26, 0.27, and 0.32 for the ISSR primers and 1.53, 1.37, 0.34, 0.22, 0.23, and 0.26 for the CDDP primers, respectively. All the genotypes were classified into two main clades and two populations on the basis of the UPGMA dendrogram and population structure analysis derived from the marker data. The variation within populations was 89.59%, 90.64%, and 90.31% for ISSR, CDDP, and combinations of both markers, respectively. Among all the data, population 2 presented the highest values of the majority of diversity indices. Our results revealed the efficacy of both markers in determining the genetic variability among iris genotypes. This is the first attempt to use these markers to elucidate genetic diversity among I. aucheri plants. These findings can be used in germplasm conservation and future breeding plans.