Molecular characterization and assessing genetic diversity of potato (Solanum tuberosum) accessions
Biniam Mesfin Ghebreslassie
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya
: J Plant Physiol Pathol
Abstract
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L) is one of the most important and widely grown vegetable crops in Eritrea contributing significantly to food security. Despite its importance, no study has been undertaken to understand their genetic diversity and hence the present study was proposed. A total of 63 potato accessions from Eritrea, 24 from Kenya and 13 from Rwanda were characterized using a set of 12 highly polymorphic SSR markers. Freshly harvested leaves were used for DNA extraction. Allelobin yielded a total of 91 alleles with an average of 7.83 alleles per marker. 97.8% of the markers were polymorphic with an average PIC value of 0.80 (0.41-0.93). Samples from Eritrea showed highest genetic diversity as explained by the diversity index (h). The first three axes of PCoA analysis explained a cumulative of 27.29% variation among the population. AMOVA indicated that about 90% of the variation was within population while the rest 10% variation was observed among populations. The cluster analysis generated three classes corresponding to the PCoA findings. Cluster I consists of 25 accessions, Cluster II consists 29 accessions while cluster III consisted of 46 accessions with 4 sub clusters. It was noted from the current study that microsatellites markers are efficient for characterization and analyzing genetic distances between potato cultivars. Cluster II and III corresponded to the late emerging and intermediate maturing groups as identified from morphological study. A combination of the morphological and molecular characterization will help to understand the genetic distances between accessions and make concrete and informed decision.
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