Morphological, biochemical, and molecular evaluation of genetic diversity in different plum genotypes (Prunus domestica L.)

Plums have recently played a significant role in agriculture with their high fiber content, vitamins, and antioxidant substances. In addition to being consumed as fresh fruit worldwide, it is grown commercially in dried form or as various processed additives. In this study, the variation among plum genotypes growing naturally in the garden borders of Susehri, Koyulhisar, and Akincilar districts of Sivas province, located in the Kelkit Valley, Turkiye, was investigated using morphological, biochemical and molecular analyses. In terms of morphological characteristics, genotype E9 stood out as having the highest values in terms of fruit weight (25.92 g), fruit width (33.11 mm), and fruit height (34.70 mm). According to the results of biochemical analysis, statistically significant differences were found in total biochemical contents. Genotype E19 has 327.01 mg GAE/100 g for total phenolic content, genotype E11 with 109.98 mg QE/100 g for total flavonoid content, genotype E5 with 48.70% for total antioxidant value, and genotype E9 with 44.54 mg cyn-3-gluc/100 g for total anthocyanin content were the highest values. To determine the genetic diversity of plums at a molecular level, 10 different ISSR primers were used, and a total of 80.00 scorable bands were obtained. 67.00 of the bands obtained were polymorphic. According to the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) method, the similarity index ranged between 0.69 and 0.99, and two different main groups were formed in the dendrogram. Genotypes 21 and 22 were in the first group. Genotypes E6 and E7 were the closest genotypes with a similarity index 0.99. Five of the 10 different inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers had 100% polymorphism, and eight had 80% or more polymorphism. It is thought that the results obtained in plum genotypes can guide researchers to understand the characteristics of plum species and to integrate the appropriate genetic material or trait of interest into modern plant breeding programs.