Assessment of genetic diversity of mints Iranian wild "Mentha aquatic" populations using RAPD marker

Mentha aquatica is one of the most important medicinal plants. The first step for breeding purposes is to determine the genetic variation. There exists various accessions of this plant in Iran; however, no comprehensive study to fully understand it has ever been carried out. In this study, the genetic diversity of 51 Iranian wild populations of Mentha aquatica has been evaluated with random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. Total of 120 primers were screened from which 20 primers were selected for RAPD analysis. 20 primers were used that produced 240 bands. Among them 228 (93.94%) bands were polymorphic and were 12(6.06%) bands monomorphic. Cluster analysis of the genotypes was performed using Jaccard's similarity coefficient and UPGMA method and as a result 51 samples of Iranian Mentha aquatica were divided into 13 groups. The least and highest similarity coefficient were 0.21 and 0.79 respectively. The obtained dendrograms and groups showed that the applied markers in the research could distinguish the Mentha aquatica sample properly. Finally, investigation of genetic variation on this species indicated that RAPD marker is suitable approach to determine the polymorphic loci and to estimate the genetic distance between the populations of the species.