Abstract:
The present study was carried out to determine genetic variability through DNA markers and yield contributing traits as well as seed cotton yield in 26 cotton germplasm
viz.,123-CO2-13, 125-CO2-18, 170-CO2-2-126-1, 170-CO2-10-1(H), 134-CO2-C-W-21, 134-CO2-M-21-4(1471), ISC-67-1- 2(450), ISC-67-B-7, BC-68-24, B-P52-M-B-2, AP-17-2-2, H-148-63, SH-1311, 108F, 320F (Ganganagar), UK-53, C-29, TH-49-Indore, 19:94-1-5-3, C-1579, Arkot-2-1, C.M.D.E, EC-138569, C2-3, BC-68xBC-229 and BN-Red. The germplasm 170-CO2-10-1(H) recorded higher seed cotton yield per plant (86.4g), boll weight (4.20g) and plant height (143.3cm). Thus, it shows that plant height and boll weight appeared to be the most important yield contributing characters. Knowledge of genetic diversity and relationships among breeding material at molecular level has significant impact on cotton improvement. The genetic variability and relationships among 26 cotton germplasm were investigated using RAPD, ISSR and SSR markers. Eleven RAPD, 19 ISSR and 17 SSR primers generated a total of 66, 43 and 36 alleles, of which 64, 42 and 30 alleles were found to be polymorphic, resulting in 96.96%, 97.67% and 83.33% polymorphism, respectively. The similarity coefficient based on RAPD, ISSR and SSR markers ranged from 0.36 to 0.92 with an average of 0.43, thus suggesting considerable genetic variation between the cotton germplasm studied. Dendrogram was generated by UPGMA cluster analysis based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficient, grouped 26 germplasm lines into two distinct clusters comprising of cluster A and cluster B. The results obtained suggests that combined molecular markers data are efficient for measuring genetic diversity and relatedness and also aid in selection of diverse outstanding lines to be used in future breeding programs to develop new cotton cultivars.
Sheetal S Modi, DH Patel, Rajkumar BK and Preeti R Parmar. Characterization of cotton germplasm through morphological characters and PCR based molecular markers. J Pharmacogn Phytochem 2020;9(1):894-897.