**2.4 Genetic distances and phylogenetic analysis**

Patterns from RAPD and ISSR methods were scored for the presence (1) or absence (0) of clear bands to analyze genetic similarities using the Dice coefficient of similarity. Similarity matrix cluster and phylogenetic analysis was used to reveal association among strains based on the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic averages (UPGMA) using the NTSYSpc software (Numerical taxonomy and multivariate analysis system, version 2.01b, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY, USA) according to Rohlf (1997).
