Genetic variability of the bruchid Callosobruchus maculatus (F.) as revealed by random amplified polymorphic DNA

Abstract

Twenty random decameric primers were used to investigate the genetic variability of the populations of bruchid beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus (F.) collected from 12 localities of Tamil Nadu. Of these, two primers (B12 and B20) yielded clear, consistent and scorable amplicons for all the populations with a total of 249 loci in the molecular weight range of approximately 310 to 2300 bp. 78% of the fragments were polymorphic and no species-specific RAPD band was recorded. The dendrogram analysis groups the 12 populations in two major clades with no geographical bias in clustering and the similarity coefficient values <50% for most of the populations, indicating great degree of genetic heterogeneity.