The genetic diversity of safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) genotypes developed by hybridization using SSR markers

Safflower is an annual oilseed crop which has healthy edible oil containing high amount of unsaturated fatty acids in the world. In this study, we investigated safflower registered cultivars of Turkey (4), genotypes retrieved from USDA (10) and their hybrids (45) for genetic variation using 10 simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci. Genetic diversity calculated registered cultivars, genotypes and hybrids were as follows: mean number of alleles (4.67), expected heterozygosity (0.680), average effective number of alleles (3.172), and polymorphism information content (0.664). The dendrogram analysis revealed at least four possible major clusters in the parents and hybrids. High level of genetic diversity explained between the populations and Fst calculate (0.593) suggested that the clusters were differentiated to each other. Registered safflower cultivars of Turkey were distributed across all four clusters and the accessions from USA were defined in most of the clusters. The dendrogram based method analysis revealed two major clusters which corresponded to spiny and spineless safflower genotypes. It was suggested that the studied 6 SSR markers could be utilized for safflower breeding studies based on molecular analysis.