ISSR analysisreveals low genetic diversity and high genetic differentiation in <em>Kaempferia galanga</em> L. in South India populations

Abstract

<em>Kaempferia galanga </em> is an important medicinal herb used in many ayurvedic drug preparations.We investigated the genetic diversity and structure of 4 populations of <em>K. galanga</em> collected from South India using inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. A low level genetic diversity was noticed among the populations (PPB= 44.45%; <em>h</em>= 0.1517 and <em>I</em> = 0.2309). Average diversity within population was also low (PPB= 23.29%; <em>h</em> = 0.1003; <em>I</em> = 0.1439) and the highest genetic diversity was observed in Shimoga population (PPB= 27.27%; <em>h</em> = 0.112; <em>I</em> = 0.1625). Nei’s differentiation coefficients (<em>G</em>_ST) was found to be high (0.3942) and the gene flow (<em>N</em>m) was low (0.7683), confirming the high population genetic differentiation. The unweighted pair-group method using arithmetic average (UPGMA) clustering demonstrated similar results. Based on the overall low genetic diversity and high genetic differentiation among <em>K. galanga</em> populations in South India, a conservation strategy is proposed.