Genetic Variation in Sideritis tmolea through AFLP

The genus Sideritis L. (Lamiaceae) is represented by 45 (53 taxa) species of which 39 taxa are endemic in Turkey. The genus distributed mainly in Southern and Central Anatolia, especially in Western Anatolia. Sideritis tmolea was first registered by P.H. Davis in 1950 while he was visiting the mountain Bozdag in west part of Turkey. Sideritis species have been traditionally used in folk medicine as antiinflammatory, antimicrobial, antioxidant, antispasmodic, analgesic and carminative agents.  In this study, we were to evaluate AFLP marker techniques for their ability to detect genetic diversity within a set of 29 Sideritis tmolea genotypes. For this purpose 14 primer combinations were used to screen for polymorphism among the genotypes. In total,  392 allels were scored. The number of polymorphic bands per AFLP primer combination range between 16 (M-CTC/E-AGC) and 42 (M-CTG/E-AAG) with an average of 28. The average PIC value for the AFLP products was 0.49. The highest degree of dissimilarity (0.82) was found between the accessions 13 and the accessions 23, indicating that these cultivars were distinct to each other. The lowest degree of dissimilarity (0.09) revealed by the AFLP analysis was found between genotype 27 and genotype 28. The population structure was determined using the STRUCTURE software, and 2 major groups (K=2) were identified among 29 Sideritis tmolea genotypes. Further, these results suggest that AFLP analysis may be an efficient and effective markers technology for determining genetic relationships among Sideritis tmolea genotypes.