Detection of genetic diversity of Turkish pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) cultivars using SSR markers

The Southeastern Anatolian region of Türkiye contributes to nearly a quarter of the global pistachio production. This area also contains a diverse pistachio germplasm. In this study, the genetic diversity of four long-type standard local pistachio cultivars “Siirt”, “Uzun”, “Kırmızı” and “Akıncı” was investigated using 7 SSR markers. The seven SSR markers (Ptms-3, Ptms-9, Ptms-14, Ptms-31, Ptms-33, Ptms-40, and Ptms-41) used in the analyses revealed a total of seventeen polymorphic alleles and six of them (35.3 %) were identified between 2 to 3 (with an average of 2.42). Pairwise genetic similarity coefficients varied from 64 % to 79 %. Genetic similarity between the “Siirt” and “Akıncı” (78.6 %), “Siirt” and “Uzun”; “Kırmızı” and “Akıncı” cultivars (78.0 %), “Akıncı” and “Uzun” (71.4 %), “Siirt” and “Kırmızı”, (64.3 %) and “Kırmızı” and “Uzun” (64.0 %) were calculated. The average values of expexted (He) and observed (Ho) were calculated as 0.450 and 0.286, respectively.