Genetic diversity assessment in Nicotianatabacum L. with iPBS-retrotransposons

Knowledge of genetic diversity could be beneficial by contributing important information in the selection of breeding material. The objective of this study was to explore the genetic diversity and relationship in the Turkish tobacco germplasm with the iPBS- retrotransposons marker that emerged as a universal method. A total of 90 landraces and 6 commercial cultivars collected from different geographical regions of Turkey were used in this study. Eleven most polymorphic iPBS-retrotransposons primers yielded a total of 119 scorable bands and 98 of these bands were found to be polymorphic (82.35%), with an average of 8.91 polymorphic fragments for each primer. The mean polymorphism information contents were found to be 0.33, ranging from 0.10 to 0.80. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean revealed that the genotypes belonging to the same geographical regions were often present in the same group and very close to each other. Based on the Bayesian clustering model, the genetic structure of Turkish tobacco germplasm was divided into 2 main groups. This is first study to explore the genetic diversity of Turkish tobacco by the iPBS-retrotransposons and we believe that in future the results of this study will serve as a foundation for the development of new and improved tobacco varieties in Turkey and the rest of world.