Molecular Characterisation of Fennel (Foeniculum vulgareMill.) Accessions using Start Codon-Targeted (SCoT) Markers

Abstract

Fourteen accessions were collected from different locations in northern India. Seeds of defined varieties grown in Rajasthan were procured from the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, S.K.N. College of Agriculture, Jobner, Jaipur (Rajasthan), India and were studied using start codon-targeted (SCoT) markers. A total of 36 SCoT primers were screened to study the diversity, out of which, 35 primers could amplify reproducible bands. A part of that SCoT 20 primers could not amplify reproducible bands. These primers were selected for molecular characterisation of 14 Foeniculum vulgare accessions, which produced a total of 256 bands (7.0 bands per primer), of which, 240 were polymorphic. The analysis revealed 85.69% polymorphism for SCoT, respectively. Similarity coefficient was used to detect the phylogenetic relationship; subsequently, dendogram was constructed for SCoT data. The unweighted pair group method with arithmatic average cluster analysis revealed two distinct sub-clusters in the dendogram. In cluster 1, 13 accessions were grouped together, whereas variety 6 was present in cluster 2. Accession number 6 was different from all 13. The genetic diversity explained by gene-targeted markers shows that SCoT marker can be very effective for characterisation of genetic diversity in medicinal plant like F. vulgare.