Sequencing and comparison of the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer region for Iranian black caraway populations more

Black caraway (Bunium persicum Boiss.) belonging to the family Apiaceae is an economically important medicinal and aromatic plant found naturally growing in dry temperate regions of Iran. The present investigation assessed the difference of the sequences of ITS2 region between nine populations of black caraway from Iran by multiple sequence alignment. The sequencing was performed on an Applied Biosystems 3130xl genetic analyzer, using the BigDye terminator cycle sequencing kit (Ver. 3.1) following the manufacturer's instructions. Multiple sequence alignment was done by MegAlign (DNASTAR Lasergene software, version 7.1) using ClustalW method. This region showed some mutations and was different between the compared populations. The multiple sequence alignment grouped the populations into 4 main clusters. Minimum dissimilarity was between Mashhad and Yazd ecotypes (2.8 %) and maximum was between Asgari and Sirch ecotypes (14.4%).