Analysis of seed protein diversity in Cicer arietinum L. genotypes with different seed coat colour using SDS-PAGE

SDS-PAGE technique was used for the study of seed protein polymorphism among three genotypes of Cicer arietinum with different seed coat colour. A total of 24 polypeptide bands were recorded. Out of these 20 were common among all three genotypes and 4 (16.66%) were polymorphic. The data analysis using UPGMA clustering revealed that genotypes with C2 (dark brown) and C3 (black) were closer as compared to genotype with C1 (light brown) coat colour. Jaccard similarity coefficient value ranged from 0.87 to 0.92. The similarity matrix was subjected to UPGMA clustering to generate dendrogram. The most closely revealed genotypes were C2 (dark brown) and C3 (black) with the highest similarity index 0.92 whereas, C1 (light brown) showed minimum similarity index with C3 (black) genotype 0.87. Each of three genotypes of C.arietinum had some polypeptide bands which were peculiar to them only. This enabled distinguishing all three genotypes on the basis of specific polypeptide fragments using SDS-PAGE analysis.