engleski

Genetic structure of Dalmatian sage (Salvia officinalis L.) populations

Although knowledge and use of Dalmatian sage can be dated back to Greek Era, there is a remarkable confusion concerning its distribution and diversity. Thus, our main purpose was to extend knowledge about biodiversity of Dalmatian sage populations of South East Europe (SEE) with the intention of covering the whole distributional area of the species. Thirty Dalmatian sage populations were analysed by eight microsatellite markers revealing a total of 181 alleles. Most of the samples were collected from native populations except one population from Serbia and two from Romania that represented cultivated material and two populations from Moldova that represented naturalized populations of plants that have escaped from earlier cultivation. The allelic richness per population ranged from 2.7 to 10.4, with a mean value of 7.0. The neighbour-joining tree showed that the most of the populations grouped together in accordance to geographical position of their collecting sites, from Slovenia in the North-West of the region to Greece in the South-East, with the exception of seven populations (two from Kosovo, two from Romania, two from Moldova and one from Serbia) that grouped separately from the rest and can be considered as non-native. The results were confirmed further using Bayesian model-based clustering method. Non-native populations had a considerable lower allelic richness in comparison to native populations. The great majority of the populations did not exhibit any significant departure from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The indication of recent bottlenecks has been found in some non-native populations (from Moldova and Romania), but also in some native populations (from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia). In almost all of the SEE countries Dalmatian sage is gathered from the wild which could lead to genetic erosion of natural populations. Therefore, these data represent a necessary prerequisite for designing monitoring programs for plant genetic resources conservation.

Salvia officinalis L.; biodiversity; microsatellite markers; genetic structure; bottleneck

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