Genetic diversity of yeheb (Cordeauxia edulis Hemsl.) from southeastern Ethiopia using inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers

Abstract

Yeheb (Cordeauxia edulis Hemsl.) is a multipurpose and evergreen shrub plant endemic to southeastern corner of Ethiopia and extends through central Somalia. In spite of its importance as a food security plant, there is no information on the genetic diversity of this plant. Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyze genetic diversity of C. edulis using inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. Genetic diversity of six populations of yeheb, each represented by ten to twelve individuals, was analyzed. Eleven primers were tested and four primers were selected. The four primers amplified 37 loci of which 32 (86.49%) were polymorphic bands with eight polymorphic bands per primer. There were high levels of polymorphism at the population level with polymorphic bands ranging from 32.43% to 59.46%. The highest level of diversity with Jaccard’s similarity coefficient of 0.490 was observed between Gambare and Maned populations whereas the lowest level of diversity with similarity coefficient of 0.620 was observed between Godir Woyis and Mirafadle populations. The Nei’s gene diversity and Shannon’s information index were 0.278 and 0.423, respectively. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed that within populations genetic variation (71.03%) was found to be much higher than among populations (28.97%). Gambare population showed the highest genetic diversity indicating that this population should be considered as the primary sites in designing conservation areas for this plant as well as for its future improvement.

Key words/phrases: AMOVA, Cluster analysis, Genetic similarity, Multipurpose tree.