Evaluation of Genetic Diversity Among Exotic Sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) Genotypes Through Molecular Based Analysis (RAPD-PCR)

There is a remarkable diversity among sorghum species; hence it requires a powerful marker system for genome characterisation. RAPD (randomly amplified polymorphic DNA) is a very favourable technique used to distinguish the sorghum genotypes due to its clarity and speed. We observed genetic diversity among 30 sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) genotypes using RAPD markers. Sixteen RAPD markers produced a total of 148 bands with a mean of 9.25 fragments per loci. Out of the 148, 132 bands showed polymorphism (89.19%), and 16 bands showed monomorphism (10.81%). PIC (polymorphism information content) values were varying from 0.2035 to 0.3438 with a mean of 0.2792. Genetic distance was ranged from 0.013 (for genotype 4 and 8) to 0.807 (for genotype 10 and 27). Cluster analysis exhibited that dendrogram consists of four major groups. Results represent that genotype 1, 3, 5, 15, 6, 11, 4, 8, 26, 29, 20, 24, 14, 25, 19, 23, 2 and 13 were closely related to each other, and genotype 10 was the most diverse genotype among all the studied genotypes by making an independent cluster. The first two factors of principal component analysis (PCA) PC1 (15.06) and PC2 (10.98) had the highest contribution in variability as 10.18 and 7.42%, respectively. Thus, sorghum genotypes can be isolated from each other at the molecular level by using molecular markers.