RESEARCH ARTICLE Genetic diversity and population structure of Haloxylon salicornicum moq. in Kuwait by ISSR markers 1 1 1 1 2 Fadila Al SalameenID *, Nazima HabibiID , Vinod Kumar , Sami Al Amad , Jamal Dashti , Lina Talebi3, Bashayer Al Doaij1 1 Biotechnology Program, Environment and Life Sciences Research Centre, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Shuwaikh, Kuwait, 2 Desert, Agriculture & Ecosystems Program, Environment and Life Sciences a1111111111 Research Centre, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Shuwaikh, Kuwait, 3 Environment Pollution and a1111111111 Climate Change Program, Environment and Life Sciences Research Centre, Kuwait Institute for Scientific a1111111111 Research, Shuwaikh, Kuwait a1111111111 *
[email protected] a1111111111 Abstract OPEN ACCESS Haloxylon salicornicum moq. Bunge ex Boiss (Rimth) is one of the native plants of Kuwait, extensively depleting through the anthropogenic activities. It is important to conserve Halox- Citation: Al Salameen F, Habibi N, Kumar V, Al Amad S, Dashti J, Talebi L, et al. (2018) Genetic ylon community in Kuwait as it can tolerate extreme adverse conditions of drought and salin- diversity and population structure of Haloxylon ity to be potentially used in the desert and urban revegetation and greenery national salicornicum moq. in Kuwait by ISSR markers. programs. Therefore, a set of 16 inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers were used to PLoS ONE 13(11): e0207369. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0207369 assess genetic diversity and population structure of 108 genotypes from six locations in Kuwait. The ISSR primers produced 195 unambiguous and reproducible bands out of which Editor: Ruslan Kalendar, University of Helsinki, FINLAND 167 bands were polymorphic (86.5%) with a mean PIC value of 0.31.