Comparative assessment of ISSR, DAMD and SCoT markers for evaluation of genetic diversity and conservation of landrace chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) genotypes collected from north-west of Iran.

Morphological traits and three molecular markers techniques: start codon targeted (SCoT), inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) and directly amplified minisatellite DNA (DAMD) markers were compared for fingerprinting of 40 landraces chickpea genotypes collected from different geographical locations of north-west of Iran. Variance analysis of ten measured morphological traits showed significant differences existed between genotypes. Cluster analysis based on morphological traits, divided genotypes in three distinct clusters. Average polymorphism information content (PIC) for ISSR, DAMD and SCoT markers was 0.216, 0.232 and 0.232, respectively, and this revealed that SCoT markers were more informative, followed by ISSRs marker, than other markers for the assessment of diversity amongst genotypes. Cluster analysis for three different molecular types revealed that genotypes taken for the analysis can be divided in three and four distinct clusters. Accessions from same geographical regions mostly showed more genetic similarities than those from origins far isolated apart. These results suggest that efficiency of SCOT, DAMD and ISSR markers was relatively the same in fingerprinting of genotypes but SCOT and DAMD analysis are more effective in fingerprinting of chickpea genotypes. To our knowledge, this is the first detailed report of a comparison of performance among two targeted DNA region molecular markers (SCoT and DAMD) and the ISSR technique on a set of samples of chickpea. Overall, our results indicate that SCOT, ISSR and DAMD fingerprinting could be used to detect polymorphism for genotypes of chickpea.