Vol. 8, Issue 4 (2019)

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is self pollinating crop belongs to Poaceae family; it is fifth most important cereal crop in the world after wheat rice, maize and barley. Molecular markers are useful tools for assessing genetic diversity compared with morphology and pedigree information as they are not affected by environmental factors and reveal differences among genotypes at the DNA level. In the present investigation, the PCR amplification results of 15 SSR primers generated 525 bands. Out of these 327 bands were polymorphic and 198 bands were monomorphic among 33 germplasm. Highest polymorphism was recorded in SSR primers Xtxp248, Xtxp18, Xtxp69 Xtxp32 Xtxp88, Xtxp285, Xtxp10, Xtxp31, Xtxp75 (100% polymorphism) whereas Xcup11, Xtxp41, Xtxp40, Xtxp319, Xtxp228 and Xtxp312 produced monomorphic banding patterns. The average monomorphic band per SSR primer was 13.2 (37.71%) and also average polymorphic bands per SSR primer was 21.8 (62.28%).

The Polymorphism information content (PIC) value of SSR primers ranged from 0.46 to 0.88 with an average of 0.33. Xtxp32 was most informative having PIC value 0.88 whereas Xtxp18 found least informative having PIC value 0.46.The amplicon size was found different for each SSR primer. The amplicon size ranged from 75bp to 300 bp. Most of primer generated 200 to 300 bp fragment. Xtxp18 primer showed ~200-450 bp amplicon size in some germplasm.

The cluster analysis was performed using UPGMA method. The dendrogram was divided into two main clusters i.e. cluster I and cluster II. On the basis of cluster analysis the highest similarity i.e. 97% was observed amongst IS5148 and IS2187.

The polymorphism and similarity can be utilized for further breeding programme and varietal development using QTL character specific study.