Genetic variability of European honey bee, Apis mellifera in mid hills, plains and tarai region of India

To observe the genetic variability in European honey bee, A. mellifera, PCR was run separately with five primers and analysis of the banding pattern was worked out to investigate the molecular profile of honey bee genotypes collected from different locations having random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) primers. All the five primer screened, amplified the product in between the range of 100 to 1300 bp and 49 scorable markers bands were generated through polymerase chain reaction (PCR), of which 38 (77.55%) were polymorphic and 11 (22.44%) were monomorphic bands identified. Based on the estimated genetic similarity matrix, the highest genetic similarity value (0.861) was noticed between the mid hill region, Jeolikote and tarai region, Pantnagar and lowest genetic similarity value (0.375) was observed between Haldwani and Rajasthan. The major gene cluster consisted of eight European honey bee, A. mellifera accessions from Haldwani, Almora, Do-gaun, Jeolikote, Fatehpur, Ramnagar, Aligarh, Pantnagar, while the minor gene cluster comprised single accession from Rajasthan. Key words: Genetic variability, Apis mellifera, RAPD primers, DNA extraction, polymerase chain reaction (PCR).