Morphological and molecular characterization of flax ( Linum usitatissimum L.) accessions obtained from different locations in Turkey

Flax ( Linum usitatissimum L.) is one of the most significant industrial crops due to its oil and fiber, which have a plethora of uses. Because of this, the characterization and introduction/adaptation of flax crops are of great interest. For this reason, we aimed to investigate the genetic diversity and patterns of flax cultivars/genotypes (a 63-cultivar/genotype was used) employing single sequence repeat microsatellite markers via 16 strong amplicon loci, and by estimating their morphological attributes. We determined the quality of the flax, in terms of oil content and composition, and its fiber quality using scanning electron microscopy and strength-linked attributes. For assessment, a series of statistical analyses were carried out in order to cluster and scatter the relevant parameters corresponding to the cultivars/genotypes. Of the assayed flax cultivar/genotypes, Eckendorfi was found to have promising agromorphological values. The average polymorphic information content values were recorded (= 0.689), and the smallest and largest loci with allele dimensions were Lu9(2) and Lu19-Lua613(6) respectively. Overall, the agromorphological attributes were consistent with the microsatellite-based markers in decoding the genetic diversity and population structure of the flax germplasm.