BIOSYSTEMATICS INVESTIGATION OF GENUS Glycyrrhiza (Papilionaceae) in NORTH OF IRAN USING RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNA (RAPD) MOLECULAR MARKER

The plant Licorice belongs to cereals Legumes (cereal) family (Fabaceae) with about 30 species in the world. Based on Flora Iranica, this genus has three species in Iran including G. glabra, G. echinata and G. aspera, which two species of them were collected from Hirkani forests.

The present study was performed in order to examine the populations of G. glabra and G. echinata species in Northern provinces of Iran. For this purpose, 11 population of G. echinata species and 4 populations of G. glabra species were evaluated to study morphological traits and genetic diversity. In the performed morphometry studies, more than 40 characters (including vegetative and reproductive) were measured and statistically analyzed through Spss software. In order to detect the most variable morphological characters among populations and species, the Factor Analysis was performed based on PCA which the first 11 components totally created 98.02 percent of total variance. Based on WARD method, the obtained dendrogram was divided into two main clusters. In order to evaluate molecular diversity of Glycyrrhiza populations, genomic DNA was extracted by using CTAB method. 12 primers were selected for numerical analysis. Obtained dendrogram also shows two main clusters. The obtained results from morphometry study and molecular study of Glycyrrhiza genus in north of Iran was similar to each other. The point which is very important is that all populations of G. glabra placed closely together and kouchesfahan population belonging to G. echinata is very close to all populations of G. glabra. These results shows accordance of morphometrical study results with molecular study results.