Diversity study of Drumstick (Moringaoleifera Lam.) using Microsatellite markers

The study of the magnitude of genetic diversity existing within thirty one accessions of Moringaoleifera collections made within and outside Nigeria was conducted using ten Randomised Amplified Polymorphic DNA and tenMicrosattellite markers.None of the RAPD showed amplification bands. Five out of the Microsattellites markersamplified, four primers MO1, MO10, MO15 and MO41 were polymorphic in nature while the marker MO6 produced only a monomorphic band.PIC value was highest for the primer MO41 with 0.75 followed by primer MO1 with 0.68 while, the lowest PIC value was recorded by the primer MO15 with 0.11.A total of 19 alleles were produced by the four primers and the number of alleles ranged from two to nine with an average of 4.75 alleles per primer. The maximum number allele frequency was generated by primer MO15 followed by MO10.The gene diversity varied from 0.12 to 0.78 with an average of 0.52, PIC content of the SSR primers ranged from 0.11 to 0.75 with an average of 0.48 with primers MO 41 followed closely by primer MO1 having maximum numbers of allele number, PIC and gene diversity. Hence, the primer pairs MO41and MO1 can be considered in future molecular studies of Moringaoleifera.The Cluster analysis was able to group the thirty one accessions into two main clusters with four sub clusters. Six of the accessions were found to be duplicated or closely related with one or two other accessions having 0.00 genetic distances between them. The clusters were having some accessions grouped based on same area of collection, however there still existed groupings that were not having link with area of collection.