ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC VARIATION AMONG DIVERSE TARAMIRA (ERUCA SATIVA MILL.) GERMPLASM BASED ON MOLECULAR MARKERS

Genetic diversity is a key to identify elite genotypes for any crop improvement programme. In present study, diverse Taramira (Eruca sativa Mill.) genotypes were characterized using molecular markers in order to assess the inherited patterns of these genotypes for identification of elite and genetically diverse genotypes. Sixty (60) genotypes were provided by Bio- resources Conservation Institute (BCI), National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), Islamabad, Pakistan. Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) analysis revealed that 54 ploymorphic bands were generated using 40 primer pairs. Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) value calculated for 10 SSR selected primers determined allele variations at each locus. These values varied from 0.234 for primer PBCGSSRBo36 to 0.720 for primer Na10-G10 with an average PIC value of 0.495 per locus. Each primer produced an average of 1.4 polymorphic bands. All the selected primers produced polymorphism among studied genotypes. The allele's size varied from 90bp-700bp is the evolution of proposed molecular approach. These results inferred that the accessions studied in present research have low variation revealing narrow genetic background of these accessions. Present investigation concerning molecular analyses, illustrated the highest level of inter -species and middle level of intra-species diversity amongst evaluated genotypes.