Morphological traits and molecular fingerprinting for assessing biodiversity in native Iranian Rosa persica Michx. ex Juss

In this study, the genetic and phenotypic diversity of 16 Rosa persica accessions collected from their native habitats in Iran was investigated. Twenty-two quantitative morphological traits, 8 ISSR, and 8 RAPD scorable molecular markers were used to assess morphological and genetic diversity. An analysis of the morphological traits of the accessions revealed significant differences between them (p ≤ 0.01). In addition, the mean comparison showed that the accession “Neishabor 3” had the highest plant height, and the accession “Arak” had the highest flower diameter among the accessions. The molecular analyses showed that the average number of effective alleles was 1.56 and 1.65 for 8 ISSR and RAPD primers, respectively. The ISSR primers (UBC835, UBC843, and UBC850) and the RAPD primers (OPC20, OPAG13, TIMBE07, and OPAA04) showed a polymorphism of 100%. The dendrogram resulted from cluster analysis using the UPGMA method for the ISSR marker with a distance of 0.58 similarity coefficients and classified the genotypes into 4 main clusters. The RAPD marker at a higher similarity coefficient (0.71) placed the genotypes in 5 main clusters. The results of the morphological and genetic evaluations were not completely consistent probably due to environmental factors causing changes in morphology. Flow cytometry showed that all accessions of R. persica are diploid (2n = 2x = 14). The peculiarities observed in the genotypes of R. persica underline the need for increased characterization and conservation work. This information is valuable for targeting breeding programs and effectively managing germplasm resources within Rosa spp.