Assessment of Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Dipcadi erythraeum from Indian Thar Desert Using SCoT Markers

Dipcadi erythraeum , family Asperageaceae, is an endemic, threatened, and medicinally important bulbous plant of Indian Thar desert. In the present study, we used start codon targeted (SCoT) marker for assessment of genetic diversity and gene flow pattern of D. erythraeum from Indian Thar desert . A total of 30 individuals comprising of four populations were collected from four geographical locations of North-West part of Rajasthan state. A total of 60 amplicons were obtained with 10 SCoT primers, which revealed 60–100% polymorphism with an average value of 92%. Furthermore, average resolving power (RP) and marker index (MI) were estimated to be 2.55 and 2.79, respectively. The genetic diversity parameters revealed an average value of Nei’s gene diversity ( h ) is 0.499 and Shannon’s information index ( I ) is 0.334 in D. erythraeum populations. High gene flow (Nm = 1.302) and higher genetic diversity were observed within population rather than among populations; such higher values are convincingly associated with endemism and adaptive ability of D. erythraeum and help the individuals to withhold adverse environmental conditions of Thar desert. The dendrograms generated through UPGMA and Neighbour Joining method revealed grouping of accessions, predominantly, with respect to their cryptic genetic variations among populations. However, there were certain instances of mixed and geographic clustering where-in populations P2 and P3, showed close affinity to each other while population P4 appeared to be extremely diverse. The study will be helpful in the selection of genotypes for improvement of D. erythraeum .