Current Trends in Natural Sciences Vol. 6, Issue 12, pp. 6874, 2017 Current Trends in Natural Sciences (online) Current Trends in Natural Sciences (CDRom) ISSN: 2284953X ISSN: 22849521 ISSNL: 22849521 ISSNL: 22849521 http://www.natsci.upit.ro *Corresponding author, Email address: akifedalda@erciyes.edu.t 68 GENETIC DIVERSITY ANALYSIS IN SNAPDRAGON (  L.) USING MORPHOLOGICAL AND MOLECULAR METHODS Akife Dalda Sekerci 1,* , Halit Yeti$ir 1 , Zeynep Yildirim 1 , Osman Gulsen 1 1 Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Erciyes, , 38039 MelikgaziKayseri, Turkey                               !     "#   $%  &  ’     (&     &  ) &    $*              +   &    ,#    &      &     $$        &        & )            $- ".           , %%    & / 0  1 & 2    &    #**  #-* )  &          &               &       &  &         &       1     (&3   2  1. INTRODUCTION Snapdragon (  L.) is a species of plants belonging to the genus  and is a member of family 4 (Oyama and Baum, 2004).   has a flower with amazing shape and fabulous colors, commonly known as snapdragon or dog flower (Huxley and Griffiths Levy, 1992). It is herbaceous annual flowering plant in the Mediterranean region (Ramadan et al., 2013).   is extensively used as an ornamental plant and is one of the model species in genetic science (MateuAndres and De Pacol, 2005).   is produced seeds and it can be used in containers, borders, flower beds, various landscape plans, rockeries and herbaceous borders. The dwarf varieties are bushy and are very useful for window boxes and pots while the trailing types are used to hanging baskets (Bhargava et al., 2015). Flower petals are characterized by a highly different morphology manifested in a variety of shapes, sizes and a series of colors. It is thought that this diversity develops as adaptation to biotic pollinators, especially insects (Glover, 2011; RaczynskaSzajgin et al., 2014). In addition,  is an important cut flower crop grown throughout the world because of their showy, brightcolored flower heads available in a several colors (Ahmad and Dole, 2014). Also, this flower has a relatively