Sudeshna Baruah, Utpal Kotoky, Ramendra Nath Sarma, Kaushik Das, Sewali Saikia, Ashok Kamal Gogoi, Sanghomitra Sarma, Supriya Sonowal and Sarat Sekhar Bora
Abstract
The Plantains and bananas are native to tropical Asia, which includes India, Burma, Thailand, and Indochina. And being a part of this area, Assam has huge banana diversity. The 24 genotypes of bananas (Musa spp.) from four distinct genetic groups (AAA, AAB, ABB and BB) were collected from various parts of Assam to study the genetic diversity present among the genotypes. In order to analyze the DNA fingerprint pattern of 24 genotypes, 52 randomly chosen SSR markers were used and 197 bands were scored, out of which 170 bands were found to be polymorphic. Maximum numbers of polymorphic bands were amplified by SSR8. Average number of total bands and polymorphic bands per marker were 6.16 and 5.31, respectively. While comparing every single pair of genotypes, for 276 combinations, the Jaccardâs coefficient of similarity was computed based and UPGMA cluster analysis was carried out, which shows the genetic relationships between the genotypes visually and identified two large genotype clusters of genotypes. During the investigation, specific bands or molecular identities for some genotypes were found from the banding profile of SSR markers. This study demonstrated that there is a significant degree of genetic variation present even among closely related genotypes within the same genomic group and that there is a substantial deal of genotype diversity within the Musa germplasm of Assam.