16S rRNA revealed a low rate of maternal genetic variations in Cyprinus carpio Linnaeus, 1758 across the southern Caspian Sea

Genetic diversity surveys are informative and practical tools in aquaculture and restocking programs. With its maternal inheritance, mtDNA provides direct information about the available source of genetic variations in the female brood stock. The present study investigated the maternal genetic diversity of the Caspian common carp, Cyprinus carpio, and the farmed common carp across the southern Caspian Sea using direct sequencing of 571 bp fragment of 16S rRNA. A number of eight haplotypes were identified, with an average of Hd = 0.55. A low level of population differentiation was recognized with the overall Fst = 0.01, indicating an assumption of the shared ancestry in C. carpio in the southern Caspian Sea. Among different regions, Anzali population was observed to be a more unique stock of common carp across the southern Caspian Sea basin. Hence, considering Anzali as a separate population is highly recommended to enrich the genetic diversity and avoid the population structure breakdown in C. carpio. The obtained results during the present study can be useful in the ongoing restocking activities of C. carpio along the southern Caspian Sea. Furthermore, rehabilitation of the main rivers to provide the natural breeding of anadromous fish species such as C. carpio should be considered for their future conservation

The People’s Attitude towards the Language Use in the Local Media Broadcast: A Case Study of Azerbaijani language in Tabriz

The public broadcast media, to which the television (TV) and radio belong, are arguably the most significant but a controversial topic discussed in linguistic literature

Evaluation of salt tolerance in almond [Prunus dulcis (L.) Batsch] rootstocks

In this study, four interspecific Prunus rootstocks (‘HS314’, ‘HS312’, ‘HS302’ and ‘GF677’) and the Iranian almond cultivar ‘Sahand’ were subjected to four different salinity levels (1.5, 3, 6 and 9 dSm-1) to determine the effects of salt level on growth parameters and chemical compositions. The results obtained indicate that increased salinity level had significant negative effects on leaf chlorophyll content, leaf area, dry and fresh weight of root and shoot. In addition, increasing the salinity level in general caused an increase in leaf proline concentration; however, the different genotypes were significantly different in response to the salinity level. According to these findings, proline content increase in ‘Sahand’ cultivar was lower than those of the other studied genotypes were. The majority of the plant's responses to the high salinity levels (6 and 9 dSm-1) were significant with no deleterious effects observed on plant growth triggered by lower salt concentrations of 1.5 and 3 dSm-1. A significant decrease in total chlorophyll and chlorophyll b content was also found at the high salinity levels but no significant change in chlorophyll a was evident. The potassium (K+), magnesium (Mg2+), calcium (Ca2+), sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl-) ion concentrations of the leaves and roots were significantly different among the studied genotypes due to their exposure to different salinity levels. The concentration of Mg2+, Cl- and Na+ as well as the Na+/K+ ratio in the leaves of all the genotypes were increased by the salinity stress, whereas it had no significant effect on the Ca2+ and K+ concentrations as well as the Na+/Ca2+ ratio. The result obtained in this study suggest that ‘HS314’ and ‘GF677’ interspecific hybrids may represent novel sources of salinity tolerance.Keywords: Breeding, interspecific hybridization, proline, salinit

Genotyping-by-sequencing reveals the impact of restocking on wild common carp populations of the southern Caspian basin

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Anthropogenic and natural fragmentations shape the spatial distribution and genetic diversity of roe deer in the marginal area of its geographic range

Habitat destruction and fragmentation are major factors in the destruction of genetic diversity and affect the movement behavior of the Roe deer population in the remaining habitats. Here, we study the population and landscape genetics of Capreolus capreolus (roe deer) in northern and northwestern Iran using twelve polymorphism microsatellite markers. From 111 total specimens, 63 had successful extraction (6 feces, 35 tissues, 9 bones, and 13 antlers). We considered 30 microsatellite polymorphic loci, of which only 12 were amplified for our further analysis. For genetic diversity analysis, the Weir-Cockerham method was applied to measure the inbreeding coefficient (FIS) and fixation index (FST) for each locus as well as for each population. For landscape genetics, the susceptibility patterns of genetic variations were assessed using three hypotheses including isolation by distance (IBD), isolation by environment (IBE), isolation by resistance (IBR), and individual landscape genetic analysis. A habitat suitability map as an indicator of landscape resistance was constructed from several species distribution models (SDMs) algorithms including Generalized Boosting Models (GBM), Maximum Entropy (Maxent), Random Forest (RF), Generalized Linear Model (GLM), Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) and artificial neural networks (ANN) and an ensemble model. Our estimated FIs index showed that the Golestan, Arasbaran, and Guilan populations had the highest and lowest genetic diversity among roe deer populations. According to the Fst criterion, our results showed that Golestan and East Azarbaijan (Arasbaran) had the highest and Mazandaran had the lowest genetic distance patterns. Our results do not suggest that there is high genetic differentiation for roe deer in the region, with high levels of gene flow between study areas. We found that geographic distance has no significant relationship with genetic distance and that there is no significant relationship between the ecological niche non-similarity matrix and the genetic distance matrix. The most influential factors affecting gene flow in roe deer were aspect and elevation variables. The analysis suggests that the landscape has no significant influence on the structuring of the studied population and shows little genetic differentiation

Determination of S-alleles in Iranian sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) using consensus primers

Sour cherry is a tetraploid species, and gametophytic self-incompatibility (SI) operates in this species in the same way as in other stone fruit trees. However, while self-compatibility is most common in sour cherry and self-compatibility (SC) genotypes are rarely found, both SI and self-compatible (SC) types are selected in sour cherry. In this work, S-alleles have been identified for 70 sour cherry accessions and cultivars from the Shabestar regions of Iran, with S-genotypes of 68 cultivars identified for the first time. To identify the S-alleles, PCR-based methods were used. The amplification of the different alleles using combinations of the four forward primers (PaConsI-F, PruC2, PaConsII-F, EM-PC2consFD) and the five reverse primers (PruC4R, PCE-R, PaConsI-Rnew, PaConsII-R, EM-PC5consRD) revealed that they were the most useful for the identification of the sour cherry alleles. Nine known S-haplotypes (S6, S4, S9, S6m, S6m2, S24, S26, S35, S36a) were identified. In our study, alleles S6, S9, and S6m2 had a high frequency. It was shown that the consensus primers can be used to detect incompatibility alleles in sour cherry accessions. Our study has proved that the diversity of S alleles between the studied accessions was low, indicating low genetic diversity, which could also be due to the selection of superior genotypes by farmers

Integration of morphometrics and machine learning enables accurate distinction between wild and farmed common carp

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Diversity of morpho-physicochemical traits in Iranian sour cherry genotypes using multivariate analysis

In this study, morpho-physicochemical characterization of sour cherry genotypes from Iran was investigated. Thirty-four morphological and eight physicochemical traits were recorded. Sour cherry genotypes had a high variability in traits related to fruit characters such as fruit weight, stone volume, total anthocyanin content and total soluble solid. As a result, sour cherry genotypes exhibit total phenolic content and antioxidant activity higher than “Ciganymeggy” and “Erdi botermo” cultivars. Principal component analysis (PCA) suggested that leaf dimensions, fruit weight, stone weight, and stone volume could be sufficient for the identification of genotypes. Hierarchical cluster analysis classified sour cherry genotypes and “Ciganymeggy” and “Erdi botermo” cultivars into two main clusters. The first cluster was characterized by a upright tree vigour, depressed fruit pistil end, reniform shape of fruit, high sweetness, dark red juice, flower high length and diameter, fruit and stone weight and length and diameter, total soluble solid, low total phenolic content, high total flavonoid content and high total anthocyanin content

Isolation and Characterization of Novel Microsatellite Markers in Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.)

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) has been cultivated from ancient times for its economic, ornamental and medicinal properties globally. Here, we report the isolation and characterization of 12 polymorphic microsatellite markers from a repeat-enriched genomic library of Punica granatum L. The genetic diversity of these loci was assessed in 60 genotypes of Punica granatum L. All loci were variable: the number of polymorphic alleles per locus ranged from two to five (average 2.9). The observed and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.15 to 0.87 and 0.29 to 0.65, respectively. The polymorphic information content ranged from 0.26 to 0.61 (average: 0.43). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that polymorphic microsatellite markers have been reported for P. granatum L. These new markers should allow studies of the population structure and genetic diversity of pomegranate to be performed in the future

Gene flow among wild and domesticated almond species: insights from chloroplast and nuclear markers

Hybridization has played a central role in the evolutionary history of domesticated plants. Notably, several breeding programs relying on gene introgression from the wild compartment have been performed in fruit tree species within the genus Prunus but few studies investigated spontaneous gene flow among wild and domesticated Prunus species. Consequently, a comprehensive understanding of genetic relationships and levels of gene flow between domesticated and wild Prunus species is needed. Combining nuclear and chloroplastic microsatellites, we investigated the gene flow and hybridization among two key almond tree species, the cultivated Prunus dulcis and one of the most widespread wild relative Prunus orientalis in the Fertile Crescent. We detected high genetic diversity levels in both species along with substantial and symmetric gene flow between the domesticated P. dulcis and the wild P. orientalis. These results were discussed in light of the cultivated species diversity, by outlining the frequent spontaneous genetic contributions of wild species to the domesticated compartment. In addition, crop-to-wild gene flow suggests that ad hoc transgene containment strategies would be required if genetically modified cultivars were introduced in the northwestern Mediterranean