Genetic identification among different 15 male genotypes of Pistacia vera L. species in comparison with five main commercial male cultivars accredited by Ministry of Agriculture (Adam, Jamil, Ebrahim, Elyas and Khalifa) was achieved using SSR markers. Seventeen primer pairs out of Twenty SSR primers were able to amplify PCR products. SSR segregation produced 44 putative alleles, of which 34 were polymorphic (77.27%). Genetic similarity among all studied genotypes ranged from 0.45 between Jamil cultivar and MAS1 genotype to 1 between Ebrahim cultivar and MA1 genotype which means that they are identical. The UPGMA cluster analysis based on Jaccard's coefficient grouped all genotypes into three main clusters. The number of alleles revealed by each SSR analysis ranged from 1 to 5, with a high level of expected heterozygosity (He) 0.507. Co-dominant SSRs loci were observed in some studied genotypes giving a value 0.235 of observed heterozygosity (Ho). According to the polymorphic allele's number and the expected heterozygosity; Marker Index (MI) was 23.97. Our results concluded that SSR marker is an informative technique, which revealed high ability to differentiate individuals, and played an important role as a genetic marker for identification and evaluation studies within P. vera species.

This research was conducted at the Scientific Agricultural Research center in Sweida province during (2014-2015). Breeding program was assessed in the aim to insert the bisexual phenomena of P.atlantica species (3 different hermaphrodite genotypes PA12, PA35, and PA37 as donators of pollen grains) to the commercial cultivars of P.vera (Ashouri and Batouri). Genetic relationships among the previous species and their progenies (F1, 6 genotypes of crossing program) was studied using 20 specific SSRs primer pairs, 16 of them were able to detect PCR amplification. Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) segregation produced 44 putative alleles, out of which 40 were polymorphic (90.91%). Genetic similarity between the hybrids and their parents were closer to their female than to their male parents except for the hybrid HB3,which revealed a genetic distance 0.37 with its female parent (Batouri cultivar FB) and 0.43 with its male parent (PA35 hermaphrodite P.atlantica genotype). The UPGMA cluster plots based on Jaccard’s coefficient grouped the genotypes into two main clusters. The number of alleles revealed by each SSR analysis ranged from 1 to 8, with a level of expected heterozygosity (He) 0.496, observed heterozygosity (Ho) 0.25, and Marker Index (MI) 19.84. These results suggested the efficiency of SSR markers for distinguishing lineage genetic studies in the Pistacia spp. in breeding programs to elicit new cultivars, in particularly the primer pairs Ptms-7, EPVM021, EPVM016, and EPVF019 which may form the platform to detect sex expression in the genus Pistacia.

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All Pistacia species are dioecious, male and female flowers are born on separated trees. Our recent studies identified new hermaphroditic genotypes of P. atlantica with different structure of racemes and flowers at the south of Syria. Therefore, the current research aimed to assess genetic variation among 11 genotypes (3 female, 5 hermaphroditic, 3 male) across fifteen ISSRs primers in Sweida Research Center (2018-2019). All of the primers were able to detect the polymorphism, which revealed 214 bands, 205 of them were polymorphic (95.79%). The number of bands for each primer ranged from 6 to 33, with an average 14.27 bands for each Primer. Genetic similarity among all studied genotypes ranged from (0.27) between hermaphroditic genotype (PA52) with female genotype (FA3) as well as between MA3 male genotype and FA2 female genotype, while the highest genetic similarity was 0.77 between two hermaphroditic genotypes (PA37and PA52). Cluster analysis grouped all studied genotypes into three main clusters according to their sexual structure; the first cluster contained all of the hermaphroditic genotypes and the second cluster comprised of all male genotypes, while the third cluster included all female genotypes. The results demonstrated the importance and the efficiency of ISSR technique by revealing the genetic variation among P. atlantica genotypes and separating all of them into detached clusters according to their sexual structure. Farther more, some primers were able to detect common bands in each sexual structure which might help to understand the mechanism of sexual inheritance within the studied species.

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