Development of EST-SSR Markers and Genetic Diversity Analysis Among Wild Pistachio Species

The encoded parts as well as the non-encoded parts of the eukaryote genomes have sequence replication units that are found in abundance and have 1-6 bp known as simple-sequence repeats (SSRs) and may affect gene expression. These markers are developed and designed through expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and data mining and used for further research in molecular breeding. The inter-species survey and genetic diversity of 100 individuals of 10 wild pistachio species were evaluated with the newly developed EST-SSR markers. In this study, 1330 ESTs were selected from Pistacia species, of which 61.05% were simple and 38.94% were compound repeat motifs. The 30 primers that showed the most polymorphism in this study were used to examine the diversity of 100 individuals from different populations of pistachios. These EST-SSR markers showed that they are suitable for the study of diversity, considering that the mean of polymorphic information content values was equal to 0.78. Pistachio accessions were divided into four groups based on cluster analysis, principal coordinate analysis, and Bayesian method grouping, and these three methods confirmed each other's results. The newly developed EST-SSR markers in this study can be a valuable resource for genetic research such as association/linkage mapping of quantitative traits, diversity analysis, and molecular breeding.