Morphological Attributes And Total Seed Protein Revealed Diversity In Ziziphus Nummularia (Burm. F.) Wight & Arn. Populations From Malakand Division, Pakistan

Ziziphus nummularia (Burm. f.) is a multipurpose wild tree species well adapted to the arid regions of Pakistan. The tree is drought tolerant and may ensure food security due to its sustained fruit production from poor and eroded soils of arid regions. The genetic diversity/evolutionary history of the Z. nummularia among the genotypes is still not well understood growing in agro-ecological regions of Malakand Division, KP, Pakistan. This study has evaluated intraspecies morphological as well as total seed protein subunits diversity within 120 genotypes of Z. nummularia. It was recognized that except leaf type (alternate), leaf shape (ovate), and leaf color (green) that showed monomorphism; the genotypes exhibited polymorphism of varying degrees in all other morphological traits viz., vigor, leaf margin, tomentose (dense), stem color, spine length, fruit color, and fruit shape. Total seed protein profiling was carried out on 12% slab gel electrophoresis, 12 bands (loci) with molecular weight ranges from 10KDa to 180KDa were detected in Z. nummularia. The majority loci represented high polymorphism. The locus contribution towards genetic disagreement (LCTGD) and locus linkage of Z. nummularia was 91.66% and 8.333% respectively. Notably, the B-1 locus was monomorphic in Z. nummularia and was treated as species-specific whereas, B-2-B-12 was polymorphic. The average genetic disagreement for B1-B-12 was 0.15, 0.24, 0.19, 0.18, 0.15, 0.16, 0.16, 0.13, 0.14, 0.14, 0.14 and 0.31, respectively. Both the UPGMA and PCA analyses revealed the coherence of Z. nummularia populations with the agro-ecological regions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the firstever report documenting intra-specific variation and genetic architecture of the endemic Z. nummularia genotypes growing in Districts Dir Lower, Buner, and Swat. The study reveals that the existence of enough diversity within Z. nummularia genotypes growing in the region. The collected samples/materials can also be included in the crossing scheme to generate offspring that capture greater genetic diversity for selection again in the future.