Genetic diversity analysis among different horticultural groups of indigenous and exotic Citrullus landraces using microsatellite markers

Abstract

The study utilised a total of twenty simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers to investigate the genetic diversity of 53 watermelon accessions from different groups of Citrullus i.e., citroides, lanatus, and colocythis. Twelve of the twenty SSR markers were shown to be highly polymorphic and were statistically analyzed using Power Marker and NTSYSPc softwares. A total of 33 alleles were generated by polymorphic SSR markers, on an average of 2.6 alleles per loci. Heterozygosity among accessions for individual loci varied from zero to 0.17 (BVWS02306 marker).The gene diversity and PIC values varied between 0.08 to 0.72 and 0.46 to 0.90, respectively and the primer which had the highest gene diversity and PIC values was BVWS02422. The UPGMA-based dendrogram classified all the 53 accessions into two major clusters at 48 per cent similarity. All 41 cultivated watermelon accessions were grouped in cluster I and the remaining 12 accessions from wild types were grouped in cluster II. Thus, this study highlights the importance of molecular markers in the identification of wild and cultivated lines and their exploitation in future breeding programs. Keywords: Watermelon, genetic diversity, microsatellite, Jaccard similarity coefficient &nbsp