Abstract
Substitution of plant cultivars of high commercial value with a cheaper, lower-quality one is a common fraud committed against consumers and producers. Since it is one of the most widely grown legumes, lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) are a suitable for such frauds. This study aimed to identify lentil cultivars which are registered and authorized in the market in Turkey by using current molecular methods. For this purpose, 26 lentil cultivars were analyzed for 15 SSR markers and 2 DNA barcode loci (trnH-psbA and matK). A high allele diversity was observed by 12 scorable SSR markers, and the average number of alleles was determined to be 16. One of the important findings was the presence of “cultivar-specific alleles” that can be used to identify each cultivar in the lentil market in Turkey. At least one “cultivar-specific allele” was obtained for each cultivar. The lentil cultivars were analyzed in terms of 2 DNA barcode regions as trnH-psbA and matK. Sequences that could identify 14 of the 26 cultivars were obtained. While the rate of the intra-species variation for the trnH-psbA region was observed to be low, a higher rate was found for matK. Nevertheless, it was observed that intra-species discrimination can be made more effective when both loci are used together. We expect that the results of this study, especially the cultivar-specific SSR alleles and DNA barcoding sequence data may be used routinely to identify on production and packaged products that are commercially available in markets.