Studies on genetic diversity in elite varieties of <i>Chrysanthemum</i> using RAPD and ISSR markers

Abstract

Genetic diversity in 40 elite varieties of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Chrysanthemum</i> was evaluated through two types of PCR based markers, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR). These elite varieties resulted in the amplification of 214 bands with 16 RAPD and 4 ISSR primers. Of these amplicons, 6 were found to be monomorphic and rests were polymorphic, indicating presence of high level of genetic diversity in the studied varieties. All the varieties were related with each other with an average correlation of 0.42 Jaccard’s coefficient of similarity. The varieties ‘Robinhood’ and ‘Classic Red’ were most closely related (68% similarity level), while ‘Thyokangha’ and ‘Phil Houghton’ were widely apart from the variety ‘Maharaja’ (23% similarity level). The cluster analysis among the variant shows two major clusters containing the spray types and standard types. The above results illustrate that although the genetics of <i>Chrysanthemum </i>is very complex, RAPD and ISSR are powerful tools to detect the genetic diversity in <span style="mso-bidi-font-style:italic">its varieties.

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