ISSR Marker Analysis of Acacia Auriculiformis in First Generation Orchard Populations

Acacia auriculiformis A. Cunn. ex Benth. is an important fast growing tree species in plantation forestry programs and also used for pulp and paper production. In India, phyllodinous Acacias viz, Acacia auriculiformis and Acacia mangium have been used as the source of paper pulp and timber. Utility value and growth performance of these Acacia species led to the initiation of genetic improvement programs in the form of seedling seed orchards, progeny trials and hybrid production. With the technical collaboration of Australian Tree Seed Center, CSIRO, Australia, many short term and long term projects have been undertaken in the past fifteen years at the Institute of Forest Genetics & Tree Breeding (IFGTB), Coimbatore. The genetic structure of forest trees and the pattern of genetic variation that are maintained in the successive generations are essentially a function of the mating systems. The present work targeted the assessment of genetic diversity using Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) in Acacia auriculiformis seedling seed orchards of first generation established by IFGTB in Panampalli, Kerala. Ten ISSR markers were profiled for fifty three individual phenotypes with two replications in the seedling seed orchard (SSO) population. The results from the ISSR data revealed that the total number of bands was 215 in which polymorphic bands were 184 and mean percentage of polymorphism was 85.5. The study showed that in the first generation orchard population have exhibited higher gene diversity (Neis genetic diversity of 0.45) in Acacia auriculiformis.