Abstract
Rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum) is an economically important plant which is native to Indonesia and Malaysia. The diversity of rambutan in Indonesia is abundance especially in Kalimantan where the wild relatives still grow naturally. Rambutan cultivars are usually differed from each other based on fruit morphological characters. However, rambutan tree begins to fruiting for the first time in 3-4 years. Therefore, another character is needed to characterize each cultivar in a short period. The objectives of this study were to distinguish rambutan cultivars using leaf morphological and Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR). As many as 30 rambutan cultivars collected from Cipaku Orchard and Mekar Sari Park were observed for their morphological and ISSR characters. Six characters of were surveyed for leaf morphological character. For the genetic character, 6 out of 31 ISSR primers were assessed which resulted in 58 polymorphic bands (87%). As a result, leaf morphological characters overlapped among cultivars causing difficulties distinguishing each cultivar. ISSR marker, three major clusters have been identified according to UPGMA method. Index similarity among rambutan accessions from ISSR data ranged from 48-93%. As a conclusion, ISSR marker could be potentially applied rambutan cultivars characterization.
Highlights
Rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum L.) is one of tropical fruit that has a high potential value. It belongs to Sapindaceae which originated from South East Asia primarily in Indonesia and Malaysia (Leenhouts, 1986)
Plant materials used in this study were 30 rambutan cultivars collecting from Mekar Sari Park (MSP) and Cipaku Nursery (CN) Bogor (Table 1)
Leaf morphology among rambutan cultivars was varied in leaflet number per petiole, the shape of leaflet lamina, tip, base, as well as the leaflet size
Summary
Rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum L.) is one of tropical fruit that has a high potential value. Leaves of rambutan are highly varied which are potential to be studied as a cultivar marker. Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) is a molecular marker amplifying DNA sequence region between two identical microsatellites which generates a lot of DNA loci. It gives a high reproducibility DNA result which applied to detect genetic variation in lower taxa (Zietkiewicz et al 1994). The purpose of the present study was to characterize rambutan cultivars using leaf morphological and genetic character using ISSR marker. This study may be useful as the first step in increasing economic value of Rambutan which is still lower than that of other popular tropical fruit such as banana and mango as well as identifying potential genotype from local races for future development
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