Detection of genetic diversity using microsattelites in rice (Oryza sativa L.).

The objective of this research was to detect useful microsatellite markers for studying genetic diversity among eight rice varieties to reveal the genetic relationships among these varieties and to evaluate the potential of this technique for fingerprinting and clustering of rice genotypes. The 14 rice microsatellites markers used in this study produced a total of 112 alleles from the eight genotypes analyzed. The sizes of the alleles observed with automated fluorescent detection ranged from 65 bp to 336 bp. The PIC values reflection of alleles diversity and frequency among the varieties, were high for all microsatellites with average 0.782 and ranged from a low of 0.438 for RM50 to a high of 0.891 for RM206 and RM241. In addition, a cluster analysis was conducted to grouping the varieties and to construct a dendogram. The dendogram indicated that the classification of the varieties was in agreement with their parentage. This result proved that fluorescently labeled microsatellite markers were a good tool for testing genetic diversity. Finally, in this study the automated fluorescence detection was used to improve the efficiency of microsatellite analysis to a level comparable to that of multi-locus fingerprinting techniques. Therefore, this analysis can be expected to greatly increase the efficiency of genetic diversity assessment, variety fingerprinting and identification, the genetic physical mapping of genes and quantitative trait loci and marker-assisted selection during plant breeding.