Detection of genetic diversity in Jasminum species through RAPD techniques

Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technology was used to work out the genetic relationship among the twenty one accessions of Jasminum spp. Forty decamer primers from OP-S and OP-V were used for this purpose out of which 14 primers, ten from OP-V and four from OP-S series produced 1173 reproducible, bright and clear bands which ranged from 250 bp to 10,000 bp. Overall 195 alleles were detected. The PIC value calculated for these primers ranged from 0.438 to 0.698 which indicates a good level of genetic diversity among the accessions as also revealed by generated similarity matrix. The similarity values among the genotypes ranged from 0.263 to 0.776. The resulting dendrogram divides the accessions into two distinct main clusters (A and B) at 0.40 similarity value. Cluster A has the most diverse jasmine accessions, while cluster B further divided the accessions into smaller groups. The results clearly indicated that RAPD analysis provide a good tool to detect and classify the genetic diversity of Jasminum spp. It is believed that these findings are helpful in further exploration, classification and improvement of Jasminum spp.