RAPD marker analysis for delineating of genetic diversity among date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) cultivars

Abstract

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is belongs to Arecaceae family. It is a dioecious and long lived monocotyledonous fruit tree on the Globe. The fruit of date palm has great socio-economic importance with high nutritional value for arid and semi arid regions of world. Date palm can survive at very high adverse environmental conditions. In the present study, twenty Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers have been profiled in eight cultivars of date palm collected from date palm farm of ICAR-CIAH, Bikaner. On the basis of reproducibility and reliable fingerprints, ten RAPD primers were selected for genetic diversity analysis. RAPD has generated a total of 99 fragments. Out of those, sixty four fragments showed high polymorphism among date palm cultivars which delineate 63.57% genetic diversity. Jaccard similarity coefficients were used for the evaluation of pair wise genetic divergence; cluster analysis of the similarity matrices was performed to estimate inter-specific diversity.