Abstract

The phylogenic relationship within four species of Polygonum (including Polygonum hyrcanicum Rech. f. (three samples), Polygonum persicaria Boiss & Bushe Boiss, Polygonum avicular L., and Polygonum hydropiper L. subsp. Hydropiper) was investigated by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis (RAPD) and inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. All the species were clearly identified using 20 RAPD primers (10-mer ZO₁- ZO₂₀) and 15 ISSR primers (S₁-S₁₅). The total number of amplification products produced with 20 primers of both markers was 315. Genetic distance was calculated in order to construct phylogenic dendrogram or phylogram of closely related samples. Results indicate that the genetic distance between two samples of P. hyrcanicum  originated from Sari and Goharbaran was considered to be short (0.622) and their RAPD and ISSR banding patterns were quite similar to each other also there is a close relationship between these two samples ofPolygonum with P. avicular (0.848). The species P. hydropiper is not only far from two samples of P. hyrcanicum but also, has different patterns of RAPD and especially ISSR profiles compared to other samples. It is also interesting that P. hyrcanicum, gathered from Veresk, has no close relationship with other pairs of P. hyrcanicum. More chemotaxonomic investigation is needed to support the phylogenetic classification trees.

Key words: Polygonum, Polygonaceae, molecular markers, P. hyrcanicum, P. persicaria, P. avicular, P.hydropiper.

Abbreviation

Abbreviations: ISSR, Inter simple sequence repeat; RAPD, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis.