MICROSATELLITE-SIMPLE SEQUENCE REPEAT MARKERS BASED GENETIC DIVERSITY ANALYSIS OF CHICKPEA GENOTYPES (CICER ARIETINUM L.)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identification of genetic diversity among germplasm accessions and breeding lines is essential for proper conservation and breeding for selected eight chickpea genotypes. Five published chickpea STMS marker sets in this study, using five genomic microsatellite (SSR) primers (TA2, TA59, TA71, TA96 and TA194). All five loci were found to have a different number of alleles, ranging from 2 for the locus TA96 to 5 for the locus TA71, with an average of 3.6 alleles per locus. PIC ranged from 0.359 in TA96 to 0.667 in TA2 with a mean PIC of 0.543 and a mean expected heterozygosity (gene diversity) of 0.648. The markers with the highest heterozygosity (0.875) and most discriminatory markers were primers TA71 and TA194. The eight genotypes were divided into three major clusters by Jaccard similarity coefficients and UPGMA cluster analysis with genotypes S4 and S8 being the most similar (Jaccard distance = 0.300) and S1–S7 being another close cluster (Jaccard distance = 0.111).  The selected SSR markers, especially TA71 and TA194 were found to be informative and can be used for fingerprinting and diversity assessment of chickpea and can be used as reference for introgression of parents in future breeding programs.