GENETIC RELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS OF PLANTS IN THE GENUS JATROPHA IN THAILAND USING ISSR TECHNIQUES

There are 5 species of Jatropha in Thailand. However, Jatropha curcas is the only one which is attracted as an alternative to biodiesel. It is widely distributed in many areas in Thailand. Therefore, objectives of this study were to determine the genetic relationships among 24 samples of the genus Jatropha using Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR). A total of 39 ISSR primers were used for initial screening, only 5 primers, MAO UBC808 UBC827 UBC873 and UBC835 were found to give polymorphic patterns. These ISSR primers amplified 54 polymorphic bands (0.35-2.3 Kb). The similarity coefficient using NTSYS pc (version 2.20e) ranged from 0.66-1.00 among J. curcas and interspecific level of Jatropha ranged from 0.472- 0.717. The dendogram was constructed base on SHAH clustering technique of UPGMA which divided the 24 samples into 3 groups. Group I consisted of 19 samples of J. curcas and J. multifida which J. curcas (Lampoon, Thailand) was closely related to J. curcas (Laos) with high similarity index was 1.000. Group 2 was J. integerrima (1), J. integerrima (2) and J. gossypifolia formed a group together. Within this group J. integerrima (1) and J. integerrima (2) were closer to each other with high similarity index was 0.943 and group 3 was J. podagrica.