Search

Background Korarima (Aframomum corrorima) is a perennial and aromatic herb native and widely distributed in southwestern Ethiopia. It is known for its fine flavor as a spice in various Ethiopian traditional dishes. Few molecular studies have been performed on this species so far. In the present paper, the ISSR technique was employed to study the genetic diversity in populations of cultivated A. corrorima. Results Seven ISSR primers produced a total of 86 clearly scorable DNA bands. High levels of genetic diversity were detected in cultivated A. corrorima (percentage of polymorphic bands = 97.67%, gene diversity = 0.35, Shannon’s information index = 0.52). Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed that 27.47% of the variation is attributed to the variation among populations and 72.53% to the variation within populations. The Fst (0.28) value showed a significant (p

Background Korarima [Aframomum corrorima (Braun) P.C.M. Jansen] is a spice crop native to Ethiopia. Understanding the extent and partitioning of diversity within and among crop landraces and their wild relatives is among the first steps in conserving and measuring their genetic potential. The present study is aimed at characterizing the population genetic structure and relationships between cultivated and wild korarima in the southwestern part of Ethiopia. Results We analyzed a total of 195 individuals representing seven wild and fourteen cultivated populations. Eleven polymorphic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were used. We observed a total of 53 alleles across the eleven loci and individuals. In total, 32 alleles were detected in the cultivated populations, whereas 49 alleles were detected in the wild populations. We found higher genetic diversity in wild populations than in the cultivated counterpart. This result implies the potential of wild korarima as a possible source for novel alleles contributing to the improvement of cultivated korarima. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed significant but low differentiation between cultivated and wild korarima populations. Similarly, neighbour-joining and STRUCTURE analyses did not group cultivated and wild populations into two distinct clusters. The lack of clear differentiation between cultivated and wild populations could be explained by historical and contemporary gene flow between the two gene pools. Conclusion The 11 SSR loci developed in this study could be employed to examine genetic diversity and population structure of korarima in other countries as well as other Aframomum species. From the five administrative zones considered in this study, the Bench-Magi and Sheka zone showed populations with high genetic diversity, and these populations could be used as a potential starting point for in-situ and ex-situ germplasm conservation and korarima improvement through breeding programs after proper agronomic evaluation. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12863-017-0540-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.