Molecular Characterization of Potato Germplasm by Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA Markers

Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was used to study the genetic diversity of six cultivars of potato. Amplification with three decamer random primers generated 35 RAPD markers of which 33 (94.29%) were polymorphic. The proportion of polymorphic loci and the gene diversity estimates were 14.29% and 0.068, 8.57% and 0.138, 17.14% and 0.075, 51.43% and 0.217 and 54.29% and 0.245 for Cardinal, Diamant, Heera, Raja and TPS, respectively. The results indicated that relatively high level of genetic variation was observed in the TPS and Raja cultivars compared to other cultivars studied. No intra-cultivar genetic variation was observed in the Ailsa cultivar. The high level of cultivar differentiation (GST = 0.634) and low level of gene flow (Nm = 0.289) across all loci reflected that the level of genetic divergence among six cultivars was high. The UPGMA dendrogram based on the Nei`s genetic distances segregated the cultivars into three clusters: Ailsa and Heera made one cluster, Cardinal and TPS made another cluster whereas Diamant and Raja grouped into another cluster. The RAPD markers were found to be useful in studying genetic diversity of potato cultivars.