Relationships among six medicinal species of Curcuma assessed by RAPD markers

The random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers were applied to detect the genetic relationships and diversity among 33 accessions of Curcuma species in China, which involved six medicinal species. A total of 115 products were amplified by 21 primers, among which 106 products (92.17%) were found to be polymorphic. 3 to 8 polymorphic bands were amplified by each polymorphic primer, with an average of 5.48 bands. The data of 115 RAPD bands were used to generate Jaccard’s similarity coefficients and to construct a dendrogram by means of UPGMA. The results show that the genetic similarity coefficient relatively of these six species is large, from the cluster diagram, the genetic relationships are not associated with their geographical distributions.   Key words: Curcuma, cluster analysis, genetic diversity, random amplified polymorphic DNA, similarity coefficient.