Genetic Diversity Analysis of Traditional Aromatic RiceUsing Molecular Markers

Abstract

The study was undertaken to assess the genetic diversity on the basis of molecular characterization among 48 traditional aromatic rice varieties of India. It is very important for germplasm management, varietal identification, and DNA fingerprinting. Twenty four ISSR markers were studied across 48 traditional aromatic rice to characterize and discriminate among different varieties. A total of 151 polymorphic alleles were detected whereas 37 monomorphic alleles were detected. Polymorphic information content (PIC) was found to be the highest in primer (AM-8) and lowest in primer UBC-840. The morphological attributes like panicle number, grain length, no. of fertile grains/panicle and potential yield showed significant
variation among the genotype. The morphological attributes are closely resemblance with molecular analysis. Result revealed that the primer AM-8 might be the best marker for identification and diversity estimation of aromatic rice varieties, followed by AM-4, AM-1, UBC-818 and UBC-850 primers. The UPGMA cluster dendrogram created in this study identified two clusters with a similarity coefficient of 53%. The genotype pair (‘Dangerbasumati’ and ‘Gangaballi’) showed the maximum similarity (0.93) among the 48 aromatic genotypes. The ISSR polymorphism and diversity could likely be attributed to pedigree. This study offered a rapid and reliable method for the estimation of variability between different traditional aromatic rice varieties which could be utilized by the breeders for further improvement of the aromatic rice varieties.