EVALUATION OF THE GENETIC DIVERGENCE OF VARIOUS ACCESSIONS OF THE SPECIES CARISSA CARANDAS USING INTER SIMPLE SEQUENCE REPEAT PRIMERS

Carissa carandas Linn. belonging to the family Apocynaceae, is an underutilized fruit plant. C. carandas has been used in many ethno medicines 6, 40, 30. Genetic diversity is a ubiquitous feature of all species in nature. ISSR markers are useful in areas of genetic diversity, phylogenetic studies, gene tagging, genome mapping, and evolutionary biology in a wide range of plant species 4, 12. In this investigation, 9 ISSR primers were used for fingerprinting of 9 different accessions of C. carandas grown in a different location. Of these 9 primers, the amplification of only 8 primers (4, 5, 6 and 7, HB10, HB12, HB13 and HB15) were satisfactory and reproducible. Results of the ISSR fingerprint showed 473 amplified fragments; 134 of them were polymorphic (28.33%). The sizes of the amplified fragments were ranged between 200 and 1700 bp in length. The primer HB-10 showed the highest polymorphism (46.67%), while primer 6 showed the lowest with only (8.70%). The results obtained in this study validate that ISSR is useful markers in genetic diversity studies and offer a promising perspective as a molecular tool for varietal identification and breeding program applications due to the polymorphism level detected by the primers. Tandem repeats flanking microsatellites are highly polymorphic, even among closely related cultivars due to mutations. The results showed a low level of polymorphism (28.33%) among C. carandas accessions growing in different locations by ISSR markers and revealed that low genetic diversity among the accessions analyzed, indicating its narrow genetic base and could be used for plantation and making value-added products.