Yellow pistachio hard scale, Lepidosaphes pistaciae (Hem.: Coccoidea: Diaspididae) is one of the detrimental pests to pistachio trees. This pest is distributed throughout the pistachio producing regions of Iran. It is complex species, having distinct genetic variation. As genetically diversity awareness is essential for identification and management, the diaspidid samples selected from 10 infected region and used to test hypotheses about the genetic variability between and within its populations, during 2016. Inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) molecular marker was used to assess genetic diversity. Extracted DNA of specimens amplified with nine ISSR primers, six of primers showed the best polymorphism. After observation and scoring bands patterns, data were analyzed with NTSYS ver. 2.02 and POPGENE ver. 1.31 software. Results showed that the bands are in the range between 100 and 2000 bp. The used ISSR primers generated 63 polymorphic fragments, and the average heterozygosity for each primer was 0.266 and the maximum number of bands were recorded for primer SMR7. A dendrogram based on the Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic mean (UPGMA) method placed them in three groups also, Anar and Baft populations were the most difference among populations. The dendrogram includes the group A (comprise populations collected from Baft, Bardsir, Zarand, Sirjan and Shahrbabak), group B (including populations collected from north Kerman, south Kerman, Kabootarkhan, and Rafsanjan) and group C (including populations collected from Anar). The results showed that ISSR markers technique is able to detect the genetic diversity among the yellow pistachio hard scale populations of various commercial pistachio cultivars within the pistachio orchards, in Kerman, Iran.
Keywords: Genetic diversity; ISSR marker; Polymorphism; Scale insects..