Genetic relationships among Iranian and exotic safflower using microsatellite markers

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is mainly grown as an oil seed crop in the semiarid and temperate regions of the world. In this study, microsatellite markers were used to evaluate and characterize genetic relationships among 20 safflower genotypes including six Iranian and 14 exotic ones. Nine primer pairs generated clear scoring bands and yielded 22 alleles ranging from 100 to 400 bp with 2-4 alleles per locus. Polymorphic information content (PIC) values ranged from 0.11 to 0.62 with an average of 0.33. The Dice similarity coefficients among the genotypes ranged from 0.06 (between Soviet Union 2 and USA) to 0.95 (between Local Isfahan and Indian 2), indicating a relatively high genetic variation among the safflower genotypes studied. Both cluster and principal components analysis (PCA) clearly classified safflower genotypes into four groups. Results indicated that in most cases safflower genotypes were divided into the groups consistent with their country of origin. Clustering some foreign genotypes into the Iranian group was due to their similar genetic basis and it was suggested that Iran may be the origin of these. The findings suggested that microsatellite markers could be efficiently utilized to assess genetic diversity and relationships among safflower genotypes.