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The salinity caused changes in plant metabolic processes. Cotton is one of the important fiber products which may be affected by salinity stress in Iran. In the present study, the effects of salinity stress and salicylic acid (SA) as improvement of abiotic stress were examined on biochemical traits and retrotransposon based markers profile (IRAP and REMAP) in cotton cultivars. Cotton seeds of two cultivars (GT40 and NNC) were cultivated in pots and different treatments; control plants with normal irrigation, 0.5 and 1mM SA, 100 and 150mM NaCl treatments and, combination of 0.5mM SA and 150mM NaCl were performed. Physiological, morphological, cellular and, genetic diversity parameters were measured after treating and following seven days of irrigation. Activity of antioxidant enzymes; catalase, peroxidase and proline in 150mM NaCl treated plants were more than other treatments. In comparison to two cultivars, GT40 cultivar had a higher activity of antioxidant enzymes. Based on retrotransposon based markers analyses, the highest heterozygosity was shown in 0.5mM SA treatment of GT40 cultivar as well as 0.5 mM SA, 150mM NaCl treatments in NNC cultivar. Totally, GT40 showed the highest genetic variation in retrotransposon profiles. The Salt stress and salicylic acid treatment provided discriminate profiles from retrotransposon movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pomegranate Punica granatum (Lythraceae) is one of the most important horticultural plants of Iran cultivated in different areas with different cultivars having specific fruit characteristic such as size, color, time of ripening, disease resistance, taste, etc. The present study considers morphological and RAPD analysis of eighteen pomegranate cultivars of the country. Agro-morphological characters were studied by using factor analyses. Clustering separated cultivars in distinct groups indicating their morphological differences. Forty RAPD primers used produced 182 bands, out of which 414 bands were polymorphic (about 44%) with average of 4.55 polymorphic bands for each primer. Eight unique bands (cultivar-specific) were observed. Two cultivars of Malas Yazdi and Poost Ghermez Mamooli showed the highest similarity among the cultivars studied [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous olive cultivars are cultivated in Iran, mainly in the north. Ninety-two accessions belonging to 10 main olive cultivars were screened by 13 microsatellite markers revealing high genetic variability both within and between cultivars. In total, 72 alleles were detected with a mean number of 5.5 alleles per locus. Twenty-four unique allelic patterns were observed, whereas six genotypes showed 15 unique alleles. Heterozygosity ranged from 0.00 to 0.98, whereas the mean number of discrimination power and polymorphic information content were 0.55 and 0.54, respectively. The combination of 5 simple sequence repeat markers made discrimination of 84% of all accessions included in the study possible. The existence of homonyms, synonyms, or mislabeling as well as intracultivar polymorphism was revealed by allele differences between accessions of the same denomination. The phenogram showed variability among as well as between some cultivars, but most accessions with the same generic names were grouped together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RAPD markers variations were studied in ten pomegranate cultivars. Twenty RAPD primers used produced 323 bands. Nineteen bands were common in all the cultivars while other bands were polymorph. Some specific bands were identified in the cultivars studied which may be used in cultivars discrimination. Primers OPB-07 produced the highest number of polymorphic bands (5.9%[U1] ), while primers OPI-16 produced the least number of polymorphic bands (5.2%[U2] ). Different similarity coefficients determined among the cultivars studied, showed the highest value of genetic similarity was observed between Abdandan and Suski cultivars while Shasavar and Shahidaneh cultivars differed from the other cultivars and stand far from them in NJ and Bayesian trees. Some specific bands/loci were observed in pomegranate cultivars studied which may be used for cultivar identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genus Tragopogon L. with about 110-150 species is distributed in Asia and Europe, while it is represented by 26 species in Iran. Hybridization and polyploidy occurs in the genus Tragopogon that bring about extensive morphological variation in its species. Tragopogon buphthalmoides (Asteraceae) is a perennial herb with common Persian name "Sheng e Iran" and "Sheng e cheshmgaavi" and is used as traditional medicine. Two varieties have been cited for this species in the country, but due to extensive morphological variability, it is difficult to delimit the two varieties. Therefore, the present study was performed to delimit these varieties by using both morphological and molecular markers (cpDNA and ISSRs). We also aimed to provide data on population genetics of the studied species due to its medicinal importance. In total 134 plant specimens of T. buphthalmoides were randomly collected from 16 geographical populations in 7 provinces. The studied plants were considered as two different varieties based on morphological criteria and were subjected to numerical and phylogenetic analyses. PCOA plot of morphological data, identified some plants with intermediate characters. Moreover, MDS plot of ISSR data and ML tree of cpDNA sequences, did not separate plants of the two varieties and the plants were placed intermixed. Therefore, we consider T. buphthalmoides as a single species with extensive morphological variability and it is complex species. Population genetic study identified four genetic groups in the country, while, STRUCTURE analysis based on admixture model as well as population assignment test revealed some degree of gene flow in the studied populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RAPD analysis was performed in 13 upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) parental genotypes and F2 back-cross progenies. Out of 20 primers used 17 primers produced reproducible bands. In total 329 bands (loci) were obtained out of which 242 bands were polymorph and only 87 bands were common in cotton genotypes studied. Some of the cultivars showed presence of specific bands while, some bands were present in all except one genotype. Some bands were absent in the parental genotypes but present only in back-cross progenies, whereas some bands occurred in the parental genotypes but absent in back-cross progenies. Parental genotypes differe significantly in the number of loci from back-cross progenies and different back-cross progenies also differed significantly from each other indicating genetic diffrences of the genotpyprs studied which is also supported by clustering of the genotypes [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]