Vegetos

Abstract

Genetic variation between 10 cultivated and wild species of pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan Millsp.), an under-exploited tropical legume was evaluated using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR) markers. RAPD markers were found to be more efficient than the ISSR assay with regards to polymorphism detection and generation of genotype specific amplicons. For the purpose of marker efficiency studies, heterozygosity was calculated for the 615 amplified products obtained across the pigeonpea genotypes using both marker system. The H_av and (H_av) p were found to be 0.71 and 0.74 respectively, whereas the marker index (MI) value was obtained to be 7.53. The dendrograms constructed using RAPD and ISSR marker systems were highly correlated with each other as revealed by high Mantel correlation (r = 0.93). Here, we report for the first time, ISSR fingerprinting of pigeonpea genotypes and demonstrated the utility of this technique in assessing genetic diversity and to identify variation within cultivated and wild genotypes of this important pulse crop. Our analyses indicate that a high degree of genetic variability prevails among wild and cultivated pigeonpea genotypes whereas, cultivated genotypes share a narrow genetic variability.