Assessment of Genetic Variations in Wild Arum Species from Jordan Using Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) Markers

Arum is a wild herbaceous tuberous perennial plant belonging to the Araceae family. So far, there is no report published in Jordan about the application of molecular markers to characterize wild Arum plant. This study was initiated to assess levels of genetic variation of this plant using molecular markers. Twenty one locations were surveyed to assess the genetic variation in this plant. Ten plants from each location were collected and measured directly in the field. In total, 210 plants were studied and three species were found in the 21 locations. Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technique was used to study the genetic variation among Arum species. Six combinations of selective primers were generating a total of 2882 reproducible and clearly scorable bands of different sizes; 98.6% of them were polymorphic. Genetic distance was constructed based on Nei dissimilarity coefficient. The overall genetic distance between Arum species was 25%. The results showed that Arum populations of the same species or having a common genome were grouped in the same cluster, regardless of the collection site. The wide range of genetic distance was represented by the high level of DNA polymorphism occurring among Arum species. The high level of reproducibility indicates that AFLP method is an effective approach to detect genetic variation among Arum species. Results attained in this study will be of great importance for further work aiming at establishing a conservation strategy for preserving and maintaining the germplasm of this plant using in situ and ex situ gene banks.