An Internal Transcribed Spacer1 (ITS1) Region to Assess Genetic Variety and Molecular Evolution for the Iraqi Date Palm

Abstract

In order to set up genetic relations between date palm cultivars and to illustrate their molecular evolution, the sequences of the internal transcribed spaser1 (ITS1) region were analysed in fifteen Iraqi date palm cultivars. Seven of them were propagated by tissue culture technique. The variability of GC content in that region was determined at an average of (52.7). Out of the 15 cultivars, the aligned Sequences permitted us to pinpoint 14 haplotypes. The resultant transition/transversion bias (R) is (0.8), demonstrating that transitions occur in this location less frequently than transversions. The aligned sequences had 637 characters, according to data from (ITS1), and the divergence values were found to vary from (0.0000%) to (0.0063%) with an average of (0.0023%). The results refer to recent demographic expansion for a population of Iraqi date palms that would return to equilibrium after 0.6N generations. The study also demonstrated that the Mir alhajj TC cultivar was found to be the most sensitive cultivar for tissue culture technique propagation. After doing a multi-variety PCA analysis among cultivars, it was discovered that (PC1 and PC2) have a variability of (0.9770 and 0.4218) and an Eigen value of (7.3222 and 6.3453), respectively.