Genetic Diversity Analysis of Hedychium Species Based on RAPD and ISSR Markers

Abstract

The present study reports for the first time the genetic diversity assessment of Hedychium species collected from different parts of Manipur using Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) markers. Eleven RAPD and five ISSR markers produced 271 polymorphic fragments with an average polymorphism of 96.95% between the eleven Hedychium species and similarity coefficients ranged from 0.19 to 0.44 with an average of 0.30, which in turn, indicates high genetic diversity. Cophenetic correlation coefficients between the dendrogram and the combined similarity matrices were moderately significant (r = 0.67). UPGMA clustering based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficient using the combined RAPD and ISSR markers placed the accessions into three distinct clusters with respect to their morphological characteristics and geographical location. Both RAPD and ISSR markers were efficient in distinguishing the eleven Hedychium species, however, ISSR markers were observed to be better in displaying average polymorphism (99%) than RAPD (96.03%). The study has contributed in understanding the genetic diversity and gene pool conservation of Hedychium species.