Study on genetic diversity of terminal drought tolerant groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) genotypes based on morphological and molecular data

Abstract

Genetics divergence using D2 analysis of 49 terminal drought yolerant genotypes of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) revealed existence of considerable diversity for fourteen different characters and genotypes were grouped into seven clusters. The cluster I was the largest containing 23 genotypes followed by cluster II and cluster IV consisted 11 and 9genotypes respectively. The cluster V, VI and VII were solitary in nature. Among the 27 groundnut specific SSR markers, only seven primer pairs showed polymorphic among test genotypes. The polymorphic markers amplified a total of 20 alleles with an average of 2.86 alleles per loci and polymorphism information content ranged from 0.47 to 0.66. The dendrogram was obtained from the binary data deduced from the DNA profiles of thesamples analyzed, and at 82 per cent similarity coefficient six major clusters were formed. Cluster III consists of maximum number of genotypes followed by Cluster I and Cluster II. The genotype included in the diverse clusters can be used as promising parents for hybridization programme for obtaining high heterotic response and developing drought tolerant genotypes.