Molecular Characterization of Nepali Potato Cultivars Using Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) Markers

Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was used to study the genetic diversity of four local cultivars of potato. Amplification with ten arbitrary decamer primers produced 29 different marker bands of which 69.0% were polymorphic. The size range of the amplified DNAs ranged between 370 bp and 2500 bp. On average, 17.5 alleles per genotype were amplified using the RAPD primers. With the selected primers sufficient polymorphism could be detected to allow identification of individual genotypes. A dendrogram displaying the relative genetic similarities between the genotypes showed a range of 55.2-69.0% similarity.