Genetic variations and interspecific relationships in Salvia (Lamiaceae) using SCoT molecular markers

The genus Salvia includes an enormous assemblage of nearly 1000 species dispersed around the World. Iran having 19 endemic species out of 61 is regarded as one of the important regions for Salvia diversity in Southwest Asia. Salvia species are herbaceous, rarely biennial or annual, often strongly aromatic. These species are of medicinal, commercial and horticultural value. Due to the importance of these plant species, we performed a combination of morphological and molecular data for this species. For this study, we used 145 randomly collected plants from 30 species in 18 provinces. Amplification of genomic DNA using 10 primers produced 134 bands, of which 129 were polymorphic (97.78%). The obtained high average PIC and MI values revealed high capacity of SCoT primers to detect polymorphic loci among Salvia species. The genetic similarities of 30 collections were estimated from 0.61 to 0.93. According to the SCoT markers analysis, S. tebesana and S. verticillata had the lowest similarity and the species of S. eremophila and S. santolinifolia had the highest similarity. The aims of present study are: 1) can SCoT markers identify Salvia species, 2) what is the genetic structure of these taxa in Iran, and 3) to investigate the species inter-relationship? The present study revealed that SCoT markers can identify the species.