Morphological and molecular diversity of eggplant accessions (Solanum melongena L) using Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) markers

Abstract

The evaluation of various desirable characteristics in eggplant genotypes has facilitated the efficient process of selecting and improving their traits. Morphological parameters have proven to be valuable in assessing the similarities or differences among different accessions, while molecular data have been used to support the conclusions drawn from the morphological analysis. This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of 42 eggplant genotypes collected from Malaysia, China, and Thailand. Data for growth, yield, and related traits were collected and subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) using SAS 9.4. The field trial experiment was designed as a completely randomized block design with three replications. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the traits under study were highly significant (p ≤ 0.01). MV18 (5.97 kg) and TV17 (5.59 kg) were observed to have high yields per plant. The SSR markers used exhibited moderate average values for the number of alleles (2.53). The major allele frequency displayed a high average value (0.53) and a moderate average number of effective alleles (2.31). Additionally, the observed Shannon's information index, expected heterozygosity, and PIC were high (0.84, 0.54, and 0.45, respectively). 42 accessions were grouped into five major clusters based on similarities using the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averages based on similarity matrices UPGMA Dendrogram and the EIGEN module. The findings of this study indicate that the use of simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers can effectively estimate genetic diversity and analyze phylogenetic relationships. Moreover, these markers can assist eggplant breeders in selecting desirable quantitative traits within their breeding program.