Polymorphism Analysis of Kenaf (Hibiscus Cannabinus L.) Mutants Based on Random Amplified Polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs)

Fibre-source-plant kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) var. KR11 that was treated by a chemical mutagen Ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) have given rise some new phenotypic characters (i.e., non branching to profusely branching plants). In this research RAPD analysis was employed to determine the relative distance of the branching phenotypes to the initial line. A profusely branching M2 plant was grown to seek the mode of inheritance of the branching phenotype. The fenogram base on RAPDs was built using Clad97 program showed that the M1 plants with a high number of branches has a low similarity coefficient (0.46) compared to the initial line. Most of the first generation mutant (M1) plants with high number of branches had small similarity coefficient values, ranging from 0.59 to 0.70. M1 plants with small number of branches locate close to the initial line KR11, with similarity coefficient ranging from 0.73 to 0.89. These suggest that RAPDs is capable to differentiate the branching plants from non branching plants. The second generation mutant (M2) plant of the most-profuse-branching-M1 plant segregate many type of branching plants ranging from very small number to high number of branches, but none of them exactly resemble the Ml plant. It is suggested that the branching habit of kenaf may be controlled by many genes (polygene).