The genus Agropyron has an important role in soil protection and forage production in
rangelands. The investigation utilized 37 ISSR primers, resulting in the detection of 956 loci
within the A. elongatum genome and 705 loci within the A. cristatum genome. The findings
revealed a high level of polymorphism, with 97% of loci in A. elongatum and 84% of loci in A.
cristatum exhibiting variability. Notably, the primer (AC)8GCT emerged as a promising candidate
for evaluating genetic diversity due to its ability to amplify numerous loci in both species.
Using both the UPGMA algorithm and Bayesian analysis, the examined Agropyron
accessions were categorized into two subgroups based on their respective species. The Q
values associated with these subgroups suggested that certain accessions, namely "G16,"
"G19," "G20," "G21," "G22," "G23," "G24," and "G25," displayed potential admixture
genomes. An analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) underscored the significance of
within-species variability, which accounted for 69% of the overall diversity, compared to
between-species variability at 31%. Various genetic diversity parameters, including Na, Ne,
I, He, and the number of private loci, were found to be higher in A. elongatum when compared
to A. cristatum. Furthermore, Jaccard similarity coefficients ranged from 0.33 to 0.66
in A. cristatum and from 0.25 to 0.7 in A. elongatum, indicating the extent of genetic relatedness
among these species. Intriguingly, the study identified two and three heterotic groups
in A. cristatum and A. elongatum, respectively, which could be harnessed in the development
of synthetic varieties to exploit heterosis. The results also indicated that a small proportion
of ISSR loci pairs (5.2% in A. elongatum and 0.5% in A. cristatum) exhibited
significant levels of linkage disequilibrium (LD) (P�0.05), suggesting the potential utility of
LD-based association mapping in Agropyron species. In conclusion, this research sheds
light on the genetic diversity o