Analysis of genetic diversity of Ruthenia Medic (Medicago ruthenica (L.) Trautv.) in Inner Mongolia using ISSR and SSR markers

Ruthenia Medic is tolerant to drought, cold, high salinity, resistance to trampling and high quality features. Inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) and simple sequence repeat (SSR) molecular markers were employed for the first time to access the genetic diversity and relationships of 30 wild Ruthenia Medic accessions obtained from Inner Mongolia in the present study. A total of 94 bands were amplified by ten ISSR primers, of which 83 (88.5 %) were poly- morphic, and 57 polymorphic bands (80.4 %) were observed in 69 bands amplified by ten SSR primers. Shannon's information index (I = 0.487), and aver- age expected heterozygosis (He = 0.329) generated by ISSR primer were higher than that of SSR analysis (I = 0.372, He = 0.231). The study indicated that ISSR were more effective than SSR markers for assessing the degree of genetic variation of Ruthenia Medic. UPGMA cluster analysis revealed inconsis- tencies in the clustering patterns, as the Mantel's test between the dendrograms for ISSR and SSR data indicated a poor fit for the ISSR and SSR data types (r = 0.0970). Whereas the pattern of clustering of the genotypes remained relatively the same in ISSR and combined data of ISSR and SSR. The results of principal components analysis also supports their UPGMA clustering. These results have an important implication for Ruthenia Medic germplasm charac- terization, improvement, and conservation.