Abstract

Baye Wodajo , Feysal Bushira Mustefa and Kassahun Tesfaye

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorious L.) is an oilseed crop that is valued as a source of high quality vegetable oil. Among the genus Carthamus, safflower is the only cultivated species. The objective of this study was to investigate the genetic diversity of safflower accessions from Ethiopia using ISSR molecular markers. In this study, the genetic diversity of 70 safflower genotypes originated from different geographical regions of Ethiopia was evaluated using four ISSR primers. DNA was extracted from selected plants per accession using a triple CTAB extraction technique. The four selected ISSR primers produced a total of 43 bands of which 87.5% were polymorphic. Among regions, safflower population from Oromia showed 0.32 and 0.48 gene diversity and Shannon diversity index, respectively, with the highest percentage of polymorphism (86.1%).The highest gene diversity (0.37) and Shannon index (0.55) was shown by the only tetra-nucleotide [(GACA)4, primer 873]. Moreover, AMOVA showed that 98.9% of the variation is attributed to within population while only 1.1% is among populations variation. The results reveal the presence of higher genetic diversity that deserves conservation attention and sustainable use strategy to improve the productivity of safflower in Ethiopia.