Assesment of genetic diversity in verbesina encelioides populations using randomly amplified polymorphic dna rapd markers

Identification of inter-varietal intraspecific diversity is an essential condition for the analysis of genetic diversity. A total of 97 clear bands were generated out of which 73 77.6 were polymorphic. The total number of markers varied from 3 to 13 with a mean of 8 markers per primer. The number of polymorphic markers for each primer varied from 2 GCC-177 to 10 GCC-121 with a mean of 6 polymorphic markers per primer. The amplified product size ranged from 125 to 3968 bp. The PIC values ranged from 0.18 GCC-81 to 0.416 GCC-171 with a mean PIC value of 0.284. The Jaccards similarity coefficient values ranged from 0.48 to 1.0 with an average of 0.62. A dendrogram constructed based on the UPGMA clustering method revealed two major Groups A and B Group-A consisted of morphotypes 1 23456789 where as Group-B showed segregated genotype 10. The present findings unarguably suggest extending the scope of detecting and quantifying the prevalent genetic diversity existing at the molecular level. To our knowledge this is the first report on the characterization of V. encelioides ten morphotypes based on twelve primers. RAPD appears to have the potential to distinguish closely related morphotypes based on the patterns of their amplicons. Present study highlights that the high genetic diversity within a species could be attributed to wide distribution and divergent ecological conditions.