Assessment of genetic diversity among selected groundnut germplasm. I: RAPD analysis

Assessment of genetic diversity in a crop species is prerequisite to its im provement. The use of germplasm with distinct DNA profiles will help to gen erate genetically diversified breeding populations. The aims of the present experiment were to study molecular diversity among selected groundnut acce ssions and identify those with distinct DNA profiles for mapping and geneti c enhancement. Twenty-six accessions and eight primers of a 10-mer were sel ected for random amplified polymorphic DNA assay. The genetic similarity (S -ij) ranged from 59.0% to 98.8%, with an average of 86.2%. Both multidimens ional scaling and unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averages (UP GMA) dendrograms revealed the existence of five distinct clusters. However, this classification could not be related to known biological information a bout the accessions falling into different clusters. Some accessions with d iverse DNA profiles (ICG 1448, 7101, and 1471, and ICGV 99006 and 99014) we re identified for mapping and genetic enhancement in groundnut.