MOLECULAR DIVERSITY ANALYSIS OF DROUGHT TOLERANT RICE (ORYZA SATIVA L. GENOTYPES USING SSR MARKERS
Genetic Diversity in rice provides a great opportunity for the plant breeders to develop novel and improved cultivars with desirable characteristics. In the present study, a total of 30 SSR markers were used across twelve drought tolerant rice genotypes for their characterization and divergence analysis. Among the thirty SSR markers used, only twenty three SSR markers showed polymorphism and the PIC value ranged from 0.551 (RM 11) to 0.305 (RM 307) with a mean value of 0.38. Variation in the number of alleles ranged from 2 to 3 with an average of 2.217. A total of 51 microsatellite alleles were amplified from twelve genotypes and this demonstrates considerable variability among genotype. RM 11 was found the best marker for the identification of twelve genotypes as demonstrated by the PIC values. A dendogram was constructed using UPGMA which represents four clusters. Through dendogram analysis, highest similarity was observed between genotypes IR 957869 2 1 2 and IR 93827 29 1 1 2. The most diverse cultivars were MTU1010 and CN 2044. Further studies for comparative mapping and marker assisted selection (MAS) for drought tolerant rice genotypes can be done easily through the highly informative markers identified in this study.