Evaluation of Genetic Diversity in Some Ziziphus Genotypes Using Morphological Characteristics and Molecular Markers

Ber and jujube (Ziziphus spp.) are tropical and subtropical fruits. Seventy two accessions from five Ziziphus species including: Z. jujuba, Z. nummularia, Z. spina-christi, Z. mauritiana and Z. oxyphylla collected from different parts of Khoozestan and Ilam proviences were evaluated using leaf and fruit characteristics. The primary results of morphological characteristics showed that there were high variability for some of the evaluated traits such as fruit weight, pulp:seed ratio, leaf size and TSS/TA ratio. The highest and lowest fruit weight were recorded in Z. mauritiana and Z. nummularia species. In the second experiment, 30 accessions from evaluated germplasm which had higher fruit weight were selected and their genetic diversity was investigated using 15 ISSR primers. A total of 166 alleles were identified by the 15 ISSR primers with their sizes ranging from 170 to 1500 bp. The number of observed alleles for each locus ranged from 6 (LBMB-B) to 15 (HB14, HB12) with an average of 11.06 alleles per locus. Polymorphic information content (PIC) was highest (0.81) in the HB14 and UBC-826 loci, while the LBMB-B locus had the lowest value (0.65), with an average of 0.76 among all ISSR loci.