Mining of Genetic diversity of Lavatera cachemiriana native to Kashmir Valley

Lavatera cachemiriana is an important endemic medicinal plant of Kashmir Himalayas, the conservation and sustainable utilization are important areas to safeguard it for the future generations. The study of Genetic diversity proves to be useful tool to devise strategies for tackling extinction of any species. Therefore, In the current research work, genetic diversity of L.cachemiriana was undertaken using microsatellite based ISSR markers. The results indicated statistically significant (p<0.05) percentage of polymorphism revealed by markers as 7.50%, 57.14%, 100%, and 100% by ISSR-1, ISSR-2, ISSR-8 and ISSR-9 primers respectively. Nei-Li’s similarity index ranged between 0.716 to 0.945. In conclusion, the ISSR based genetic evaluation has revealed lower but significant levels of genetic diversity among collected accessions.