Background & Aims: The most significant cause of infertility in men is the genetic deletion in the azoospermia factor (AZF) region that is caused by the process of intra- and inter-chromosomal homologous recombination in amplicons. Homologous recombination could also result in partial deletions in AZF region. The aim of this research was to determine the association between the partial AZFc deletions and infertility.Methods: The blood samples were taken from 100 infertile men‚ who referred to the Infertility Center of Isfahan‚ Iran. 100 healthy matched people were also selected as the control group. The five markers of sY1201‚ sY1206‚ sY1161‚ sY1291, and sY1191 were applied in order to study partial deletions. Partial deletions were analyzed in AZF region using the Multiplex–STS–PCR technique. The chi-square test was conducted to check the difference between pretest and posttest. Differences were considered significant if P<0.05.Results: 9% of studied persons showed gr/gr deletion (in the patient group). Only one case of gr/gr deletion was observed in the control group. Five patients showed b2/b3 deletion. One b2/b3 deletion was seen in the control group. The b2/b4 deletion was observed in 3 patients. In conclusion‚ partial deletions were observed in 14% of the patients. The statistical analysis of the gr/gr deletion in the study indicates a meaningful difference, but b2/b3 deletion does not represent a meaningful difference.Conclusion: Our results suggest that gr/gr deletions are associated with spermatogenic failure, and there is no association between b2/b3 deletion and infertility.

Improving the baking quality is one of the main goals in bread wheat breeding and high molecular weight (HMW) glutenin subunits compositions has a key role in bread-making quality,In the current study,HMW glutenin subunit composition and quality scores were determined in 41 Iranian commercial breed wheat cultivars using nine STS specific markers,Based on the results,the exception of two cultivars,Arvand and Roshan that had a moderate bread-making quality (quality score 6),in other cultivars bread-making quality were evaluated as desirable (quality score between 8 to 10),Eleven alleles were identified at different loci,Three alleles were on the Glu-A1,six alleles on the Glu-B1 and two alleles on the Glu-D1,The highest frequency was at Glu-A1 locus related to 2* allele (70,73%),at Glu-B1 locus related to 7+8 allele (53,66%) and Glu-D1 locus on 2+12 allele (51,22%),Among the 15 unique combinations obtained,the combination of 2*,7+8,2+12 (26,83%) with quality score of 8 was the most common combination of HMW glutenin subunits,The set of markers used in this study provided the ability to identify the all common HMW subunits in Iranian wheat cultivars and as accurate and confident way to replace the SDS-PAGE technique can be used,

Objective: In order to study genetic variation and effect of drought stress on grain yield and some morphological traits in chickpea, an experiment was conducted on 64 genotypes during 2013-2014 cropping season at deputy of Kermanshah Sararood Dry Land Agricultural Research Institute, located on the western part of Iran.Methods: The experimental design was a randomized lattice design with tow replications under two complementary irrigation and dryland conditions. Six drought tolerance indices including stress tolerance index (STI), geometric mean productivity (GMP), mean productivity index (MP), stress susceptibility index (SSI), tolerance index (TOL), harmonic mean productivity (HMP), were calculated and adjusted based on grain yield under drought (Ys) and irrigated conditions (Yp).Results: Results of ANOVA under two complementary irrigation and dryland conditions revealed significant differences among genotypes for YLD, NPMP and NSPP. In dryland condition all of tolerance indices except SSI*TOL have significant negative correlation with SSI index and the rest of indices except TOL*YS, HMP*TOL and YI*TOL show positive correlation. The first two components explained 95.8% of total variation between the data. Based on biplot the genotypes 40 and 63 were superior genotypes under both stress and non-stress conditions. These genotypes had stable performance in the circumstances of low sensitivity to drought stress. Genotypes 29, 55, 56, 57, 45 and 16 had a relatively low yield and they are sensitive to drought stress. In conclusion, this study showed that the effect of drought stress on grain yield was varied which suggested genetic variability for drought tolerance in this materials. Therefore, breeders can select better genotypes based on indices and a combination of different methods of selection.

Cytoplasmic male sterile lines for Iranian rice cultivars, Neda, Tarom, Shastak- Mohamadi, Nemat, Onda, Hassani Rishak Ghermez, Amol 3, Dasht, Khazar and Sepidrod were developed after six repeated back crosses generations in the research farm of University of Agricultural and Natural Resources Sciences, Sari, Iran. STS markers (BF-STS-401 and BF-STS-402) were used for distinguishing CMS from maintainer lines or other self-fertile genotypes. The results showed that CMS lines possess two bands (464 and 335 bp) and maintainer lines possess only 335 bp bands. The results of studying allogamic traits indicated that florets of the Iranian CMS lines Sepidrod, Tarom, Amol 3, Dasht, Gerdeh, Hassani Rishak Ghermez and Neda were closed later than those of their male parents. The results also showed that glume openning time had significant positive correlation with filament length (0.720) and stigma length (0.889). Based of the results of the present study, it seems that Iranian CMS lines Neda, Tarom and Sepidrod are more suitable for hybrid seed production due to their favorable and superior floral characteristics.