Evaluation of molecular diversity of different Hashemi rice varieties of north of Iran using microsatellite markers

Iranian local rice varieties have been cultivated for a long time in various regions of the Iran. This landraces have adapted to different environmental conditions over the years and a relatively large diversity can be showed in each of them. In recent years, cultivation of Hashemi as a local variety has been increased, so that most of the cultivated area of Guilan and Mazandaran provinces and some other provinces of Iran allocated to Hashemi. However, the variety cultivating with a single name of Hashemi in different regions of Iran shows a great diversity in morphological characteristics such as plant height, growth duration and grain morphological characteristics. Although the effect of environmental factors on morphological characteristics is very high, but the question of current research was whether there is genetic diversity within this cultivar? To achieve the suitable answer, 87 genotypes, all of which were known as Hashemi, collected from different geographic regions of North of Iran (including 42 genotypes from east of Guilan province, 30 genotypes from west of Guilan province and 15 genotypes from Mazandaran province) were cultivated in the experimental field of Rice Research Institute of Iran, Rasht, Iran, in 2014 and their molecular diversity were assessed by 20 microsatellite markers. The results of diversity parameters indicated that there is a relatively high variation among the 87 studied genotypes. It is therefore concluded that what is cultivated as Hashemi in different regions, in fact, it is a very diverse population that has become a very diverse landrace due to the use of self-seeded and posibly the physical mixing of seeds of different cultivars and thus recombination between them. Therefore, it is suggested that while preserving these genotypes in Iran's rice gene bank and possibly using their desirable properties in the breeding programs, purification of this variety can also be performed to provide the pure seeds of the best genotype to farmers.