Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum var. durum) is one of the most important cereal crops widely cultivated all over the world with high economic value. In the present study, genetic variation in a mini-core collection of durum wheat germplasm, including 25 breeding lines and 18 landraces, was evaluated using 15 inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) and six start codon targeted (SCoT) markers. High levels of polymorphism were observed; 98.70% (ISSR) and 100% (SCoT), which indicated that these markers are useful tools for detection of genetic variation in the collection. Analysis of molecular variance revealed that the major part of genetic variations (90% and 93% for ISSR and SCoT, respectively) occurred within genotypes set. Comparing the genetic variation of breeding lines and landraces based on genetic parameters showed that effective number of alleles (Ne), Nei's gene diversity (He) and Shannon's Information index (I) in landraces were higher than in breeding lines. Although cluster analysis, based on both markers, separated the genotypes in five groups, the dendrogram obtained from SCoT provided the best clustering pattern. Inter-population differentiation (Gst) estimated on the basis of two marker systems representing that a vast portion of the total genetic diversity refers to variation within two sets of genotypes. In conclusion, the results verified a high level of genetic variation among the durum wheat mini-core collection, particularly among landraces, which can be interesting for future breeding programmes.

In this study, inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) and start codon targeted (SCoT) markers were used for genetic diversity and relationship analysis of nine Salvia species. Twenty-one and twenty selected ISSR and SCoT primers amplified 350 and 329 loci, respectively, of which all were polymorphic. The obtained average polymorphism information content (ISSR, 0.38; SCoT, 0.40), average band informativeness (ISSR, 16.67; SCoT, 16.45) and resolving power (ISSR, 9.75; SCoT, 12.52) revealed high genetic diversity prevailing among Salvia accessions. Considering the ISSR and SCoT data, the species with a basic chromosome number of x = 8 showed higher values of the percentage polymorphism loci (PPL), the number of observed alleles (Na) and Shannon index (I) than the other species. The partition of clusters in the neighbour-joining dendrogram based on ISSR, SCoT and combined data was similar and grouped all individuals into four clusters. However, the dendrogram generated based on SCoT separated the individuals into sub-clusters in accordance with their species and section. The Mantel test revealed a similar polymorphism distribution pattern between ISSR and SCoT techniques, the correlation coefficient (r) was 0.83, and the results showed that both techniques were effective to assess the genetic diversity. Our results indicated that SCoT markers can be used as a reliable and informative technique for evaluation of genetic diversity and relationships among Salvia species.

Progress in plant molecular tools has been resulted in the development of gene-targeted and functional marker systems. CAAT box region is a different pattern of nucleotides with a consensus sequence, GGCCAATCT, which situated upstream of the start codon of eukaryote genes and plays an important role during transcription. In the present study, several CAAT box-derived polymorphism (CBDP) primers were used for fingerprinting in mini-core collection of durum wheat (including internationally developed breeding lines and Iranian landraces). Twelve selected primers amplified 98 loci, of which all were polymorphic. The average values of the polymorphism information content (PIC) and resolving power (Rp) were 0.31 and 9.16, respectively, indicating a high level of variability among studied genotypes. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) indicated that 92% of the total variation resided among populations. The values of the percentage polymorphic bands (PPL), the observed (Na) and effective (Ne) number of alleles, Nei's gene diversity (He) and Shannon's information index (I) for Iranian landraces were higher than the breeding lines. The Fandendrogram obtained by cluster analysis grouped all individuals into three main clusters. Our results showed a remarkable level of genetic diversity among studied durum wheat, especially among Iranian landraces, which can be interest for future breeding programs. More importantly, the present study also revealed that CBDP technique was efficient and powerful tool to assess genetic diversity in wheat germplasm. Hence, this technique could be employed individually or in combination with other molecular markers to evaluate genetic diversity and relations among different species.