Morphomolecular genetic study of selected groundnut genotypes with microsatellite marker

Morphomolecular genetic studies were undertaken to identify ten divergent genotypes of groundnut at molecular level using PM-36, PM50 and PM238 SSR primers. All the microsatellite loci amplified by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) were found to be polymorphic in all groundnut genotypes except ICGV-99233. Differences were observed in the proportion of polymorphic loci, observed and expected heterozygosity values, average number of alleles in the cultivars. Only three genotypes showed significant deviations from Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE). The UPGMA dendrogram based on Nei's (1972) genetic distance, resulted in two major clusters with several sub clusters. Specific alleles of five varieties were identified (able to distinguish specific varieties), and these were PM-36/153 (Accession 12), PM-36/164 (BARI Badam 6), PM50/106 (Accession 12), PM50/102 (ICGV-93232), and PM238/100 (Accession 12). The three primers produced a total of 17 alleles with size ranging from 100bp to 164bp. The PIC (Polymorphism Information Content) value for the primer PM-36, PM50 and PM238 were found 0.75, 0.77 and 0.75, respectively. This approach will be useful for developing a set of number of SSR loci and for the protection of the varieties through Genetic Finger Printing (GFP)