The Assessment of Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Endemic Scutellaria yildirimlii by ISSR Marker for Conservation Purposes

Scutellaria yildirimlii is an endemic species from Turkey and belongs to the family Lamiaceae which has a high number of medicinal and aromatic plants. It is crucial to determine the genetic potential of these rare and endemic species for conservation; therefore, 111 samples from 5 populations of S. yildirimlii were investigated with 15 Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) primers. The percentage of polymorphic loci (PPL) of S. yildirimlii was determined as 93.9% at the species level and 56.5% at the average population level. The Shannon’s information index (I) and Nei’s gene diversity (H) were calculated as 0.292 and 0.183, respectively. Gene flow among populations (Nm) was obtained as 2.984. Also, the variation between and within the population was 16% and 84%, respectively. The distribution of populations concerning gene flow shows a correlation between Unweighted Pair-Group Method with Arithmetic Averages (UPGMA) dendrogram and Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) analysis. Structure analysis (ΔK=3) revealed that K test yielded maximum peaks for 3 groups. In addition, the population distribution resembled both the UPGMA and PCoA dendrograms.