TEMPORAL GENETIC STRUCTURE OF IRANIAN POPULATIONS OF BEECH, FAGUS ORIENTALIS (FAGACEAE)

Reforestation with autochthonous species should take into account the preservation of the temporal variability and the geographic structure of genetic diversity in forest species. In order to provide empirical data about the suitability of methods of sampling material, genetic comparison of 10 beech populations (at least 40 trees per population) and their progenies (seeds of 10 mother trees per population, each tree 7 seeds) were analysed using four highly polymorphic microsatellite loci. The allelic multiplicity was higher in seed samples than adult trees indicating gene flow from adjacent plant populations. The comparison for genetic diversity measures between adult trees and seed generation revealed no significant differences for allelic richness (Na), effective number of alleles (Ne), and number of rare alleles (Nr), neither observed (Ho) nor expected heterozygosity (He). Genetic differentiation in allelic frequencies between adult trees and seeds generation were rather low (Fst = 0.058). A close genetic relationship between adult trees from seed generation of each population, which revealed by un-weighted pair group method based on arithmetic average (UPGMA) and supported by an analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA), were detected. In this paper some aspects related to seed sampling were discussed.