Abstract:
RAPD molecular markers
were used to assess the genetic diversity of
some population of thyme (Thymus
kotschyanus) from Iran. The 17 tennucleotide
primers used that produced 185
high-resolution bands, which 21 of these
were monomorphic and 162 were
polymorphic. An average, 10.88 bands were
obtained per primer and 9.52 of these were
polymorphic. POPGENE software was used
to calculate Nei's genetic distance among
populations and based on the cluster
analysis of this matrix, a UPGMA
dendrogram was drawn using the software
NTSYS-pc. On the basis of dendrogram
among populations of wild mountain thyme,
Avan (Qazvin) and Siahkal (Gilan province)
populations was the most similar between
studied populations with the distance of
0.094 high disimilarity was observed
between Qazvin and Mazandaran 2
populations with the distance of 0.185
within populations variation based on
Shannon's information index and Nei
genetic diversity index showed that
Takestan (I= 0.26; H= 0.3) and Alamut (I=
0.24; H= 0.15) had a highest and lowest
within populations variation compared to
other populations, respectively. Average of
Fst and Nm indices, which represent the
amount of gene flow between populations,
were recorded as 0.26 and 1.361,
respectively, which reflects the high level of
gene exchange between ten populations of
Thymus kotschyanus.