Genetic diversity among Indian Aloe accessions based on RAPD analysis.

Forty six accessions of Aloe, which were collected from different part of India and maintained at Issapur farm of National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), New Delhi were studied for molecular diversity using RAPD markers. RAPD is an efficient marker for genetic diversity study because it doesnt require prior genomic information. In the present study 32 RAPD primers were screened consisting of OPL, OPM, OPC and OPE series from Operon technol- ogies, USA. Out of 32 primers, ten primers could amplify good and reproducible amplicons across all the 46 accessions. Ten RAPD primers amplified total 56 bands across 46 accessions out of which 54 (96.4%) were polymorphic. The num- ber of bands generated by RAPD primers across 46 accessions varied from 2 (OPL -03) to 9 (OPM-11 and OPM-14) bands with an average of 5.6 bands per primer. Polymorphic information content (PIC) was calculated for all 10 primers and PIC values varied from 0.13 to 0.44. Based on PIC value maximum accessions were separated by primer OPC-17 (PIC-0.44). Pair wise genetic similarities among the accessions were determined using Jaccards similarity coefficient (0.31 to 1.0) and cluster analysis was perform ed by employing UPGMA method for all 56 RAPD bands generated. All the 46 accessions were grouped into five separate clusters except IC527342, IC524197, IC436191, IC112521 and IC520361 which were ungrouped. The grouping of samples doesnt show any geographi cal isolation except in cluster5 where out of five accessions from Delhi, four were grouping together. Principal component analysis (PCA) was also pe r- formed and samples were getting distributed in all the axis which confirmed that the accessions studied ha d good genetic diversity and can be used in future breeding programme .