Abstract:
Urtica simensis is an erect perennial herb among the species of nettle which belongs to the
family Urticaceae that is endemic to Ethiopia and locally known as Samma. It is cooked
and consumed as vegetable in some parts of Ethiopia. It has medicinal properties where
traditionally people use it in treating different types of diseases, including infectious
diseases like allergies, diabetes and Malaria. This study was conducted to evaluate the
diversity of Urtica simensis to address and fill the gap on its genetic variability and
distribution using morphological characters and ISSR DNA markers. A total 133 plant
samples were collected from Northern growing areas of Ethiopia (Gondar and Mekelle),
based on variations in morphological characters. Morphological characterization was
conducted on six morphological traits which demonstrated variation based on PCA and
correlation matrix analysis. Molecular characterization was carried out using ISSR markers
where, only 5 were selected out of 16 ISSR primers that produced a total of 445 scorable
bands and 30 polymorphic loci, 100% of polymorphic bands, 1.88 genetic diversity and
2.75 Shannon index from a collection of 133 plant samples. Highest genetic diversity (H)
was found to be 0.4286 and Shannon Information index (I) was 0.6197. The highest
genetic diversity was indicated in plant samples from Mekelle compared to samples from
Gondar (0.3462 and 0.3152 respectively). The Dendrogram based on Jaccard’s similarity
coefficients generated by UPGMA cluster analysis using morphological and ISSR data
shows major and minor clusters with broad distribution of Urtica simensis individuals over
the entire tree which indicates the low divergence in morphological appearance among
populations from both study areas. Based on the results of this study, morphological and
ISSR markers were effective in studying genetic diversity of Urtica simensis demonstrated
by variations in terms of morphological appearances and genetic variability. These results
have valuable effect on characterization of Urtica simensis genetic resources in different
parts of Ethiopia for conservation purposes.
