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Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) is an industrial medicinal plant with different pharmaceutical and food applications. In this study, the leaf essential oil composition of 12 Iranian accessions of fennel collected from different geographical regions was assessed. The essential oil yield of fennel leaves ranged from 0.65% (Varamin accession) to 2.03% (Tabriz accession). Trans-anethole, fenchone and limonene were highly abundant in all of the examined oils. Trans-anethole ranged from 41.19% in Shiravan to 56.6% in Shiraz accessions and had negative correlation with most of the constituents. According to the major compounds, two chemotypes were defined in which group 1 was considered as the high trans-anethole (> 50%) and group 2 was a high limonene group. The correlation of essential oil yield and trans-anethol with climatic conditions and some morphological characters were also assessed. Higher temperatures and essential oil yield had negative Pearson correlation (r= -0.371), while trans-anethol and high temperature showed positive correlation (r= 0.459) in fennel. Furthermore, the studied accessions had different flowering time and height. The early flowering and dwarf accessions had higher essential oil yield, while the late flowering ones had higher trans-anethol in their leaves.

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To evaluate the genetic variations in eleven fennel populations in Iran, 55 accessions were analyzed by SRAP markers. Twelve primer combinations produced 171 polymorphic bands. The cumulative dendrogram delineated fennel accessions into five major groups in accordance to the geographical regions from which the populations were originated. About 43.57% of total genetic variation was detected among the populations, while 56.43% of total variation were observed within the populations. The studied populations showed high genetic differentiation (Gst= 0.52) and low gene flow (Nm= 0.46). Among the studied populations, Yazd and Kerman accounted for the highest values of PPB (%), Shanon index (I), and heterozygosity. The self-pollinated seeds were in the range of 2.01% in Paveh-2 to 9.24% in Isfahan-2 accessions. The essential oil content ranged from 0.62% in Isfahan-3 to 2.21% in Tabriz-3. Generaly, the dwarf populations viz., Tabriz and Paveh, had higher essential oil yield and their pollination was less affected by environmental factors than the average.

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In this work, the effect of three-day germination on proximate composition, total phenolic compounds, fatty acid profile, vitamin C content, radical scavenging activity, malondialdehyde content and reducing power of safflower seed was investigated. Apart from ash, other parameters including oil, protein and crude fiber contents decreased significantly during germination. Phenolics content increased gradually from 4.72 to 9.51 mg g^-1. Vitamin C sharply increased at the beginning of germination (4.22 to 7.04 mg 100 g^-1 after 1-day germination) and after that no significant difference was observed. Germination improved the quality of safflower oil by increasing the unsaturated and decreasing the saturated fatty acids (about 5%). Results indicated that germination could be a suitable bioprocess to improve chemical composition and nutritional value of safflower seed.

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 Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) markers were used to assess the genetic diversity among 23 outcross and self pollinated populations of fennel collected from different geographical regions of Iran and some European countries. The experiment was carried out to determine the effect of self-pollination on morphological traits and genetic diversity in the next generation. Fifteen primers produced 248 polymorphic bands with an average of 16.53 fragments per primer in outcross populations, while 217 polymorphic fragments with an average of 14.46 fragments per primer were generated in self-pollinated populations. UPGMA dendrogram using Jaccard’s similarity coefficients placed outcross populations in five major groups. The maximum and minimum gene diversity over loci was observed in Albania (0.53) and Poland (0.42) populations, respectively. In general, European fennel populations revealed higher expected heterozygosity (0.47) in comparison with Iranian ones (0.35). Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) ranged from 0.37 to 0.49 in self-pollinated populations, while it varied from 0.39 to 0.46 in out-cross ones. The classification based on morphological data did not confirm the molecular ones in most cases. Self-pollination led to decline in plant height in most of the studied populations. In overall, plant height of the European populations (54-66.02 cm) was less than that of Iranian ones (55-109.54 cm). Self-pollination elevated the yield of essential oil in studied fennels through its influence on fruit set. In conclusion, Albania population had the highest oil content affected by self-pollination; hence, it can be introduced as one of the valued sources in fennel breeding programs aimed for oil yield improvement.