Molecular Marker based Genetic Diversity Analysis in Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill] Genotypes

Soybean is an important legume and oilseed crop with high protein (40%) and oil (20%). RAPD markers were used to access the genetic diversity among twenty four soybean genotypes. A total of Twenty primers were used out of which 18 got amplified which produced 164 bands and all were found polymorphic i.e. 100% polymorphism. The total number of amplified bands varied between 2 (OPF-19) and 16 (OPA-01) with an average of 9.1 bands per primer. The overall size of the amplified fragments ranged between 100 and 2500 bp. The Polymorphic Information Content (PIC) values ranged from 0.126 (OPP-01) to 0.399 (OPF-19) with an average of 0.295. Jaccard’s similarity coefficient values ranged from 0.12 to 0.70 with an average of 0.41. Cluster analysis based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficient using Un-weighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Averages (UPGMA) grouped all the 24genotypes into three major groups at a similarity coefficient of 0.53. A total of four primers detected in the study produced four unique bands in four genotypes. The results showed that the level of genetic variation was high among the soybean genotypes.