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Laurel is a medicinally important plant and is known to the world for its essential oil. Turkey is the main market in the laurel leaf trade by sharing about 90% of the world trade. Here we made an effort to elucidate genetic diversity and population structure of 94 Turkish laurel genotypes collected from 26 provinces and four geographical regions using inter-primer binding site (iPBS) retrotransposon markers. A total of 13 most polymorphic primers were selected which yielded 195 total bands, of which 84.10% were found polymorphic. Mean polymorphism information content (PIC) was (0.361) and diversity indices including mean effective number of alleles (1.36), mean Shannon's information index (0.35) and overall gene diversity (0.22) revealed the existence of sufficient amount of genetic diversity in the studied plant material. Most diversity was found in genotypes collected from the Mediterranean region. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed that most of the variation (85%) in Turkish laurel germplasm is due to differences within populations. Model-based structure, principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) and neighbor-joining algorithms were found in agreement and clustered the studied germplasm according to their collection provinces and regions. This is a very first study exploring the genetic diversity and population structure of laurel germplasm using iPBS-retrotransposon marker system. We believe that information provided in this work will be helpful for the scientific community to take more interest in this forgotten but the medicinally important plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing high yielding safflower cultivars with good adaptation to diverse environmental conditions can improve production in terms of seed yield and reduce the deficiency in edible oil. The genetic variability that exists among and within populations for desirable agronomic traits can be used to develop elite cultivars. A total of 94 safflower accessions from 26 different countries were used in this study to evaluate morphoagronomic performance, determine the pattern of similarity centers, and identify the best performing accessions by conducting 2 field experiments in Pakistan and Turkey using augmented design. Genetic diversity for important yield and yield traits was described including capitulum diameter (17.30 to 28.30 mm), branches per plant (5.10 to 17.30), capitula per plant (8.70 to 80.40), and seed yield per plant (4.86 to 51.02 g). These analyses showed a good level of variation in the current study. Using principal component analysis, it was observed that days to flower initiation, days to 50% flowering, days to flower completion, seed yield per plant, capitula per plant, branches per plant, seeds per capitulum, and capitulum diameter were the major contributors to the observed genetic variability in the evaluated safflower panel. Seed yield per plant reflected a significant and positive correlation with capitula per plant, branches per plant, and capitulum diameter, and these traits can be suggested as a selection criterion in safflower breeding programs. The hierarchical clustering was in agreement with the patterns of 7 similarity centers based on seed yield per plant, capitula per plant, capitulum diameter, and branches per plant. During this study, a few promising safflower accessions were selected for future breeding programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant landraces represent a repository of a gene pool, local adaptation of their domestic species, and thereby are considered a great source of genetic variations. Such genetic variation can be helpful to mitigate the current and future food challenges. A total of 183 common bean accessions including three commercial varieties collected from 19 Turkish provinces were grown to record their morpho-agronomic variations and to evaluate the best performing accessions under multi-environmental conditions. Plant height, days to maturity, pods weight, seed length, and 100-seed weight were used to evaluate the best performing accessions under different environmental conditions. A wide range of variations for traits like days to maturity (99–161), plant height (21–168.7 cm), seed length (7.41–16.4 mm), seeds per plant (17.8–254.4), and 100-seeds weight (24.97–73.8 g) were observed and can be useful for breeding purposes. The analytic results derived from the first three eigenvectors suggested that plant height, plant weight, 100-seed weight, and days to flowering were biologically significant bean traits. Seed yield per plant was positively and significantly correlated with plant weight and pods weight. Genotype × environment biplot discriminated the studied common bean accessions based on their plant height and growth habit. Plant height, days to maturity, seed width, and first pod height were found highly heritable traits and were least affected by environmental forces. Among 19 provinces, accessions of Bilecik showed maximum pods per plant, seed yield per plant and 100-seed weight, while Erzincan and Sivas provinces reflected the prevalence of bushy and early maturing accessions. Information provided herein comprehensively explored the occurrence of genotypic variations which can be used for the development of candidate varieties responding to breeder, farmer, and consumer preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antioxidants play an important role in animal and plant life owing to their involvement in complex metabolic and signaling mechanisms, hence uncovering the genetic basis associated with antioxidant activity is very important for the development of improved varieties. Here, a total of 182 common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) landraces and six commercial cultivars collected from 19 provinces of Turkey were evaluated for seed antioxidant activity under four environments and two locations. Antioxidant activity was measured using ABTS radical scavenging capacity and mean antioxidant activity in common bean landraces was 20.03 µmol TE/g. Analysis of variance reflected that genotype by environment interaction was statistically non-significant and heritability analysis showed higher heritability of antioxidant activity. Variations in seed color were observed, and a higher antioxidant activity was present in seeds having colored seed as compared to those having white seeds. A negative correlation was found between white-colored seeds and antioxidant activity. A total of 7900 DArTseq markers were used to explore the population structure that grouped the studied germplasm into two sub-populations on the basis of their geographical origins and trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity contents. Mean linkage disequilibrium (LD) was 54%, and mean LD decay was 1.15 Mb. Mixed linear model i.e., the Q + K model demonstrated that four DArTseq markers had significant association (p < 0.01) for antioxidant activity. Three of these markers were present on chromosome Pv07, while the fourth marker was located on chromosome Pv03. Among the identified markers, DArT-3369938 marker showed maximum (14.61%) variation. A total of four putative candidate genes were predicted from sequences reflecting homology to identified DArTseq markers. This is a pioneering study involving the identification of association for antioxidant activity in common bean seeds. We envisage that this study will be very helpful for global common bean breeding community in order to develop cultivars with higher antioxidant activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]