Genetic Diversity of Some Quercus (Fagaceae) and their Putative Hybrids in Turkey

Abstract

In the study, Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) method was used to identify and differentiate between twelve different white oaks to show their genetic diversity. On the other hand, interspecific hybridization is quite common among oak species. This situation makes the hybridization between closely related parents possible. Besides genetic diversity of some white oaks, the five putative hybrids which are morphologically indistinguishable were also studied. ISSR markers produced a total of 89.71 % polymorphism with Quercus taxa and a total of 175 bands were revealed by 11 ISSR primers. Statistical analysis software’s, Minitab, NTSYS-pc (Numerical Taxonomy and Multivariate Analysis System) and POPGENE (Population Genetic Analysis) software’s were used to reveal variations between these white oaks. Effective allelic frequency, Shannon index, genetic distance was calculated by the POPGENE software. The most distance taxon was Q. pontica, then Q. vulcanica found to be genetically distant among the taxa. The results of the two analyses, cluster (CA) and principal component (PCA) are in correlation with each other and giving four groups among the studied oak taxa. Putative hybrids are usually located between their presumed parents in the dendrogram and graphs. Consequently, this preliminary study showed that ISSR markers can be used with confidence for genetic diversity of white oaks. It can also be helpful for putative hybrids to some extent.