Characterization of four salsola species and their genetic relationship by aflp

Amplified length polymorphism (AFLP) technique was used to characterize and detect molecular genetic markers for four Salsola species collected from Al Jouf region in the northern of Saudi Arabia and to shed light on their genetic relationships. Three primer combinations were used for AFLP analysis of the four Salsola species, they generated a total of 181 fragments of which 133 were species specific markers scored across Salsola species. The dendogram produced by Jaccard's coefficient and the UPGMA clustering method showed one main cluster, subdivided into two subclusters. The first sub cluster included Salsola schweinfurthii and Salsola tetrandra. The second sub cluster included Salsola villosa and Salsola cyclophylla. It is worth mentioning that this is the first study to use AFLP markers to characterize and detect molecular genetic markers for the four Salsola species and their genetic relationships. (author)