Assessment of phenotypic and genotypic diversity in Indian sesame

Abstract

Seventy two accessions of Indian sesame, Sesamum indicum L. and S. mulayanum Nair., a cash crop having potential medicinal importance were initially categorized by using seed morphological characters and dendrogram obtained employing hierarchical cluster analysis. Representative 24 accessions covering different clusters were selected for further detailed assessment. Wide variations in the agro-morphological characters among the accessions were also observed and confirmed by ANOVA (showed highly significant differences) for quantitative characters. The dendrogram obtained from agro-morphological characters using the same method as above and total 12 representative accessions were selected for the further RAPD analyses. In RAPD analysis, nine primers of OPA and OPM series showed high level of polymorphisms. The results of cluster analysis by using Jaccard’s Similarity Coefficients depicted that all the 12 accessions could be well distinguished by RAPD markers. These data collectively demonstrated large phenotypic and genotypic diversity among the selected Indian sesame genotypes that can be considered as a valuable gene pool for sesame breeding programmes.