Genetic Diversity of Popular Cultivated Turmeric Genotypes from Telangana Region Using RAPD Markers

Turmeric is one of the important spice crops in India and plays a vital role in the Indian economy. Molecular markers based characterization of curcuma species may contribute to analyze taxonomic relationship and intraspecific diversity of the genus. Among molecular markers Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis is the simplest and least laborious method and has been used to estimate the genetic distance and diversity in awide range of plant especially at the sub-species and cultivar level. The objective of this study was to assess the genetic diversity among 18 popular cultivated genotypes of turmeric, using RAPD markers. The RAPD PCR was performed by using a set of four series of primers namely OPA, OPC, OPD and OPN. The data were analyzed for calculation of various parameters like number of loci, number of polymorphic loci, polymorphism ( %), polymorphism information content (PIC) and molecular index (MI) Out of 40 RAPD primers 15 primers which gave scorable banding pattern were used for analysis of all the samples. The amplicons ranged between 80 bp to 2.8 Kb in size. Amplicon number per primer ranged from 15 (OPC 07) to 30 (OPA 18) with an average of 21.4. Polymorphism also varies in different genotype of turmeric with a maximum of thirty bands for the primer OPA 18 and a minimum of eleven bands in both the primers OPD 07 & 18 with a mean of 19.06. PIC values for RAPD primers varied from 0.71 (OPD-08) to 0.96 (OPA-18) whereas marker indices ranged between 56.3 (OPD-18) to 96.0 (OPA-18). Based on UPGMA clustering from RAPD, the genotypes were grouped into two major clusters at a similarity index value of 0.48. Pair-wise estimates of coefficient similarity for 18 genotypes ranged from 0.40 to 0.85.