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Yarrow plant or plain short type yarrow, known as Achillea wilhelmsii C. kock, belongs to Asteraceae family. The present study was conducted in order to evaluate three different yarrow populations for determination of their genetic relationship, using morphological traits in the form of nested design as completely randomized with ten replications. General heritability of all traits ranged from 98 to 100, indicating a high heritability for these traits. The highest coefficient of genetic variation belonged to root diameter (1.66), indicating the existence of hifh diversity among genotypes. The lowest coefficient of genetic variation belonged to leaf length to width ratio (0.36), suggesting a low level of variation for this character. Based on PCA analysis, the first two components justified almost 90 percent of total variations. The three populations were nearly separated according to biplot analysis. Also, cluster analysis confirmed the biplot results and the populations were identified as three separated clusters which reflect the apparent difference among yarrow populations. The results of this study showed a wide genetic diversity for evaluated populations with regarding measured traits in Hormozgan province. Aforementioned findings indicated a dormant potentials of native yarrow populaton in south Iran and high value of these resources and obviously more attention need to be paid to identify, maintenance, assessing and apply them in breeding programs.

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Tomato leafminer (Tuta absoluta) is one of the important pests of tomato in Iran. It causes serve losses to tomato yield between 50 to 100% in the world. The cryIAb gene has been introduced into many plant species, including maize resulting in protection of the maize plants against corn borer larvae. In most studies, constitutive promoters such as CaMV35S were employed for genetic transformation; however the constitutive expression of genes led to changes in plant metabolic pathways due to permanent energy consumption in plants. Since, wound inducible promoter MPI (Maize Protease Inhibitor) posses more efficiency and strength than CaMV35S promoter. Therefore, in the current study, transgenic tomato (cv. Falat) plants harboring cryIAb gene under control of the MPI promoter were developed for the first time. The MPI promoter was isolated from maize and cloned into pPZP122 expression vector replacing the CaMV35S promoter. The cryIAb gene was isolated from pCIB4427 and cloned in pPZP122:MPI:cryIAb and the resulting construct was transformed into Agrobacterium AGL1 strain using In planta approach. Initial selection of the transgenic plants was carried out in media culture containing gentamicin. PCR analysis confirmed the presence of transgene in gentamycin-resistance plants in the first and second generations by rate of 62.5% and 75.58%, respectively. Protein dot blotting using anti-CryIAb polyclonal antibody confirmed the presence of protein in the second generation of transgenic lines. Based on the result of Tuta bioassay, transgenic plants demonstrated an enhanced resistance against Tuta. Thus, the wound inducible promoter MPI can be used in genetic transformation of crop plants if insecticidal protein-encoding genes (such as different types of cry) are used and therefore, it is important to be used when plants asked to express only when are being attacked by insect pests.

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Salinity is an important limiting factor in the production of more plants, including rice. Due to the limited amount of cultivated area, identification of tolerant genotypes to environmental stresses and especially salinity is very important. The aim of this study was to investigate the genetic diversity among 114 recombinant lines derived from the intersection of local Tarom × Khazar cultivars under non stress conditions and salinity levels of 8 dS/m in reproductive stage in a completely randomized design. Combined analysis of variance showed that the differences between lines was significant for all traits. Genotypic variation coefficients also showed that the highest genetic variation among the evaluated recombinant lines was related to the number of panicles per plant. In contrast, days to 50% flowering showed the least genetic variation among these lines. In non stress and stress conditions, the highest genotypic and phenotypic correlation coefficient was observed between grain yield and number of fill grain in seedlings. Based on the cluster analysis of grain yield, the lines were classified into four groups under normal conditions and were classified into three groups under salinity conditions. The third-party lines in both cases had a higher average than the overall average. In general, the results of this study showed that there is a significant genetic variation between the studied lines in terms of salt tolerance and this variety can be used in subsequent corrective programs. Accordingly, lines 83, 81, 56, 39, 37 and 89 were the most sensitive lines and lines 107, 101, 16, 100, 84, 98, 47, 32, 14, 29, 95, 63, 5, 49, 92 and 10 were the most tolerant lines to salinity stresses of 8 dS/m and they also had higher yields and yield components. Strained lines are proposed directly for cultivating saline or for transferring salt tolerance to commercial cultivars through future breeding programs.

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