Determination of intra-species genetic variation of Phlomis kurdica rech. fil. and Phlomis oppositiflora Boiss. & Hausskn. and investigation for the hybridty of P. x melitenense Hub.-Mor. (Lamiaceae) in terms of molecular markers

Phlomis is a genus frequently subject to natural hybridization. As a result of hybridization, this genus includes many hybrids. P oppositiflora and P. kurdica are the two species that hybridize naturally in genus Phlomis. The first aim of this study is to determine intra-species genetic variation by employimg molecular markers in P. oppositiflora and P. Kurdica. The second aim is to investigate the hypothesis that P. x melitenense is natural hybrid of these two species. These three taxa were also compared for 40 different morphological characters and pollen productivity As a result of assessment of morphological analysis, P. x melitenense has shown hybrid vigorous in three characters out of 28 quantitative characters and exhibited the values between two ancestors in terms of the remaining quantitative characters. It also displayed the mozaic between ancestral phenotypes in terms of qualitative characters used in identification. Ratio of polen fertility was found 93.44 % in P. oppositiflora, 90.12 % in P. kurdica and 68.42% in P. x melitenense. As the result of evaluation of RAPD (18 primers) and ISSR (20 primers) data, it was seen that P. x melitenense is between its ancestral species being closer to P. kurdica than P. oppositiflora. The three taxa also clustered by using UPGMA tree. Such genetic parameters as observed number of alleles (na), effective number of alleles (ne), Nei's (1973) gene diversity, Shannon's Information index, number of polymorphic locus and percentage of polymorphic locus were calculated. Totally 1358 bands (707 bands from RAPD markers and the remaining from ISSR markers) were obtained from molecular data. Except for two bands, all the other bands are polymorphic. As a consequence, the data obtained from morphological characters, pollen fertility and molecular analysis has supported the hypothesis that P. oppositiflora and P. kurdica generate natural hybrids.KEY WORDS:Phlomis oppositiflora, P. kurdica, P. x melitenense, natural hybridization, RAPD and ISSR.