Morphological and Microsatellite Analysis of Intravarietal Variability in 'Cherukurasam' Cultivar of Mango ( Mangifera indica L.)

‘Cherukurasam’ is one of the choicest juicy cultivars of mango (Mangifera indica L.) whose production and quality is heterogeneous in Andhra Pradesh state, India. Exploration surveys covering three eco-geological regions of the state were conducted during summer 2009. Thirty accessions of ‘Cherukurasam’ (CKR Acc-l to CKR Acc-30) were selected and their fruit and leaf samples were collected to study intravarietal variability through classical and molecular analysis, respectively. Morphological characterization revealed variations in fruit morphology among 30 accessions. Out of the 109 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) validated with the total sample, 25 were highly polymorphic. Dendrogram based on unweighted pair group of arithmetic means indicated that the accessions were not grouped as per geographic separation. Jaccard’s similarity coefficient ranged from 0.75 to 1.00 attesting that ‘Cherukurasam’ whatsoever cultivated throughout Andhra Pradesh state is not pure clone. SSRs constitute the current marker system of choice for characterizing intravarietal variability in ‘Cherukurasam’ mango.