Assessment of genetic diversity of Pea (Pisum sativum L.) landraces using SSR markers

Abstract Background The purpose of the current investigation was to distinguish 46 pea genotypes collected from different areas of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and NARC Islamabad. We initially experienced 20 SSR markers; 10 of these markers were choosen on the basis of high polymorphism information content in the molecular assays. Results The average number of the scorable bands per primer was 29.75% while average number of monomorphic and polymorphic bands was 16.25% and 12.85% respectively. The variations of genetic diversity among these genotypes ranged from 0.18 to 0.98. Maximum genetic diversity were noted in genotypes; M-39, L-29, L-32, L-1, L-5, L-8, L-11, L-24, L-19, L-17, L-25, L-23, L-37 and M-83, while using cluster analysis based on Dice coefficients as the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA). Furthermore, principal component (PC) analysis also showed similar results as to those of UPGMA. The eight principal components (PC) accounted for 74.2% of the variation (21.74, 15.72, 8.76, 7.73, 6.19, 5.19, 4.50 and 4.37 for PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4, PC5, PC6, PC7 and PC8, respectively). Conclusion The results of the present study will be useful in understanding the pea’s genetic makeup and in the selection of suitable varied landraces for future improvement programmes in the pea.