GENETIC DIVERSITY ASSESSED THROUGH RAPD MARKERS IN SYZYGIUM ALTERNIFOLIUM (WT) WALP

Objective: The present study has been carried out to evaluate the genetic diversity in a representative population of Syzigium alternifolium from six different accessions of chittoor district. Methods: Genomic DNA isolation, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplication by using RAPD (OPJ, OPM series) primers, Agarose gel Electrophoresis, Jaccard’s similarity coefficients, and UPGMA Dendrogram. Results: Initially, 20 decamer primers were screened, a total of 28 bands were obtained from seven reproducible primers, with a mean of four amplified bands per primer. The primers OPJ6 and OPM2 resulted 100 % polymorphism. The plant species showed an average of 70.99% polymorphism. Cluster analysis (UPGMA) was used to generate a dendrogram based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficients. A maximum similarity value of 76.5% was observed two accessions of 3 and 2 followed by 2 and 1 i.e. 71.4%. Whereas 27.8% similarity value was observed between accessions 5 and 3 and, which were found to be genetically most diverse. Conclusion: The results suggest that, S. alternifolium possess the high level of genetic diversity, as compared to other endangered plant species. Present study concludes, RAPD is a potential molecular marker to evaluate the genetic diversity of S. alternifolium species.