M. Emadpour - Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII), Karaj, Iran.
R. Hosseini - Agricultural Biotechnology Group, Faculty of Engineering, International University of Imam Khomeini, Ghazvin, Iran.
E. Beiramizadeh - Research Centre for Plants and Flowers (RCPF), Mahallat, Iran.

Genetic diversity between fifteen commercial cultivars of rose were evaluated, using Ten decamer primers (A-J). All primers detected polymorphism among the cultivars. In total, 126 bands were produced, 73 of which were polymorphic. Primers E and F produced the highest, while primer H produced the lowest number of bands. The percentage of polymorphic bands ranged from 37% to 81% with an average of 63.9%. The average number of polymorphic bands produced was 7.3 per primer. Only the amplified DNA fragments ranging in size between 220 to 3000 bp were used for statistical analyses. Cluster analysis based on the presence or absence of bands was performed by Jaccard’s similarity coefficient, based on Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Averages (UPGMA). Genetic similarity ranged between 0.12 to 0.53. The dendrogram revealed two main clusters. Each cluster was divided into subgroups. This investigation showed that genetic diversity was relatively considerable among these cultivars. Also, the results propose that RAPD marker is a useful tool for evaluation of genetic diversity and relationships amongst different rose cultivars.

genetic diversity, molecular markers, RAPD, Rosa hybrida