Marker based assessment of genetic diversity in nutmeg (Myristica fragrans houtt.) using issr primers

Abstract

Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) constitute a reliable molecular marker system for genetic diversity analysis among species. The present study was conducted to evaluate genetic diversity / relatedness among superior accessions of Myristica fragrans (Nutmeg) maintained at the germplasm of Regional Agricultural Research Station, Kumarakom, Kerala, India using ISSR markers. Genomic DNA was extracted from 19 superior genotypes of nutmeg. Among the 34 ISSR primers used, only 16 primers developed reproducible banding pattern. The selected primers generated 145 amplified bands, of which 97 were found to be polymorphic. The amplicon size varied between 300 to 1500 bp. The polymorphism percentage for the tested primers ranged between 33% (UBC 860) to 100% (UBC 852a) with an average value of 65.73%. Among the different primers studied the primer UBC 815 showed the highest PIC value (0.48) and the primer UBC860 provided the lowest value (0.10). The mean value for marker index (MI) observed in this study was 1.62. The Jaccard’s similarity coefficient for the genotypes studied varied from 0.565 to 0.939. The dendrogram derived from UPGMA analysis separated the nineteen nutmeg accessions into two major clusters. The information obtained from this study could be used for further breeding programmes in nutmeg.