Genetic diversity, origination and extinction analysis in Casuarina equisetifolia using RAPD markers

Development of molecular markers for various desirable traits related to genetic diversity, origination, extinction, conservation, etc hold great potential for crop improvement of Casuarina equisetifolia L. This work focuses on the analysis of genetic diversity, origination and extinction of 24 clones of C. equisetifolia. Clones were collected from Kakinada, Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam and Vijayanagaram, Andrapradsh, India. Total genomic DNA was amplified with random oligonucleotide primers using PCR. The polymorphic bands were detected on agarose gels. Each random primer used in this study produced distinct bands. These were used for the final analysis. Six primers (OPM-05, OPM-13, OPB-18, OPE-06, OPE-07 and OPE-08) yielded 39 scorable bands. Three primers (OPM-05, OPE-06 and OPE-08) generated 100% polymorphic bands and primers OPM-13 (83.3%), OPE-20 (71.4%) and OPE-06 (83.3%) also generated more polymorphic bands. Only primer OPE-20 alone generated less polymorphic bands of 71.4%. These bands were then constructed using the RAPD distance past v 2.02 package. Following this Start method v 2.02 was used to generate a genetic diversity, origination and extinction analysis in between various clones of C. equisetifolia. The genetic diversity range varied from 10 to 18 points, origination from 0 to 4 and extinction from 0 to 2. The highest genetic diversity value of 18 points was recorded in Visakhapatnam clones (APVSP-16, 18, 22 and 23); while the lowest value was observed in Vijayanagaram clones (APVJM-35 and 39). The result provides valid guidelines for collection, conservation and characterization of C. equisetifolia genetic resources.

Author(s): M. Ramakrishnan, A. Shanthi, S. A. Ceasar, V. Duraipandiyan and S. Ignacimuthu*

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