<span style="font-weight:normal; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold" lang="EN-US">Genetic variability among <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Jatropha</i> species as revealed by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers </span>

Abstract

There is a mounting interest in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Jatropha</i> species as a biodiesel tree to lessen the energy crisis and generate income in rural areas of developing countries. The present study was conducted on 23 accessions of Jatropha belonging to seven species, comprising 6 accessions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">J. curcas</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">J. integerrima</i> each, 4 accessions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">J. gossypifolia</i>, 2 accessions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">J. dioca</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">J. podagrica</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">J. tanjorensis</i> each and 1 accession of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">J. glandulifera</i>. These different species were used to determine the genetic diversity based on amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. Four AFLP primer combinations produced a total of 369 fragments with an average of 92.25 fragments per primer combination. A total of 361 (97.54%) fragments showed polymorphism in the germplasm analyzed. In order to access the discriminatory power of four primer combination used, a variety of marker attributes like polymorphic information content (PIC), marker index (MI) and resolving power (RP) values were calculated. The PIC (0.331), RP (45.18) and MI (42.659) showed the efficiency of used primer combinations. The Jaccard’s similarity coefficient ranged from 0.165 to 0.993. Genotyping data obtained from all 361 polymorphic fragments were used to group the accessions using the UPGMA-phenogram and principal component analysis (PCA). Majority of group obtained in phenogram and PCA contained accessions as per their species. AFLP is reliable molecular technique and provides one of the most informative approaches to establish genetic relatedness in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Jatropha</i>, which may also be true for other related species.