Hamid Hatami Maleki

To investigate the relationships between agronomic traits and molecular markers in sand plantain (Plantago psyllium), a set of 17 ecotypes collected in Iran were evaluated. Twelve ISSR prim-ers were tested through multiple regression analysis to identify the marker-trait association between ISSR data and agronomic traits. Finally, the 12 primers amplified 129fragments (loci) among ecotypes: 91fragments (70.54%) of the 129fragments showed polymorphism with an average of 7.58% per primer and the rate of this polymorphism ranged from at least 57.14% for UBC824 primer up to 54.62% for UBC813 primer. Polymorphic informa-tion content ranged from 0.27(UBC814) to 0.41(UBC813), with an average of 0.36. Stepwise regression analysis between the mo-lecular data as independent variables and the studied traits as de-pendent variables was performed to identify informative mark-ers associated with the agronomic traits. Seventy ISSR fragments were found associated with eight morphological traits. Some of ISSR markers were associated with more than one trait in multi-ple regression analysis that may be due to the pleiotropic effect of the linked quantitative trait locus on different traits or is linkage of different genes. However, for a better understanding of these relationships, preparation of a segregating population and link-age mapping are necessary. Also, these result could be useful in marker-assisted breeding programmes when no other genetic in-formation is available.