Genetic diversity of Indian brinjal revealed by RAPD and SSR markers

Abstract

Brinjal or eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) is one of the most important solanaceous vegetable crop plants after tomato and potato. Through the use of PCR based markers, genetic analysis in brinjal has gained momentum during the past few years. In this study, 11 RAPD and 6 SSR primers were used to analyze the genetic variation in 29 popular Indian brinjal varieties. The 11 RAPD primers generated 64 polymorphic markers with an average of 5.81 polymorphic bands per primer. Genetic distance based on RAPD markers among all the varieties ranged from 0.07 to 0.78 with an average of 0.33. All the six SSR primer pairs were polymorphic with a total of 25 detected alleles. The number of alleles per primer ranged from 2 to 10, with a mean of 4.67. UPGMA clustering for RAPD and SSR markers grouped all the brinjal varieties into two clusters, but grouping patterns were different for each of the marker system. Based on SSR markers, the maximum genetic distance of 1 was found between Pusa Bhairav and Green Long, Green Long and KS-224, Green Long and SL-195, Green Long and KS 331 and between Pusa Kranti and SL-195 followed by 0.85 between Pusa Kranti and KS-224, and NDB-25 and Pusa Kranti. However, majority of the cultivated varieties did not cluster concordant to the collection site information or phenotypic data such as fruit shape or any other known traits. The genetic diversity of brinjal varieties reported in this study will be useful when planning future crosses amongst these varieties.