Molecular characterization of selected cultivars of rice, Oryza sativa L. using Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers

Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was performed to assess the genetic diversity in ten selected cultivars of rice, Oryza sativa L. using 30 decamer random primers. Out of 30, 25 RAPD primers revealed polymorphism while the remaining 5 primers showed no reaction. The primers produced a total of 428 bands of which 363 were polymorphic (85.02%). The number of polymorphic fragments for each primer varied from 7 to 23 with an average of 14 polymorphic fragments. The primer OPB-17 produced the maximum number of polymorphic bands. The RAPD data was analyzed to determine the genetic similarity coefficients which ranged from 0.46 to 0.81. Cluster analysis was performed using Unweighted Paired Group of Arithmetic Means (UPGMA) using the Jaccard’s similarity coefficient. The UPGMA dendrogram resolved the selected rice cultivars into two major clusters.