Assessment of Genetic Diversity and Correlation in Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) Varieties by RAPD and ISSR Markers

Abstract

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill) belongs to the family: Apiaceae, well recognized for its nutritional and pharmacological purposes. In this study, three varieties of fennel were evaluated by molecular characterization using both Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSRs) assays to identify their advantages as marker-assisted selection (MAS) in breeding
programs. Ten RAPD and five ISSR primers amplified a total of 62 and 24 fragments with a 58.06 and 70.83% polymorphism, respectively. In addition, RAPD markers gave the greatest number of molecular markers 33 with 53.23%, whereas the ISSR loci scored seven markers with 29.17%. The highest genetic distance (GD) for RAPD (0.67) was identified between Anethum foeniculum Clairv
and Anethum rupestre Salisb and ISSR (0.92) and combined (0.73) were recognized between Anethum foeniculum Clairv, Anethum foeniculum L. In contrast, the lowest GD was (0.48) differentiated between Anethum foeniculum L, and Anethum rupestre Salisb for RAPD and Anethum foeniculum Clairv, and Anethum rupestre Salisb for ISSR (0.71) and Anethum foeniculum L, and Anethum rupestre Salisb for combined (0.56). We found that the ISSR gave the highest number of polymorphism, compared with RAPD. Therefore, a combination of ISSR and RAPD markers is the best method for the genetic variability analyses of different fennel varieties in breeding programs.