Abstract

Conservation and utilization of the native plant resources is essential for long termsustainability of biodiversity. Wild native resources are adapted to specific and diverse environmental conditions and therefore, these adaptive features can be introduced into modern cultivars either through conventional breeding or advanced molecular genetic techniques. Understanding the genetic make up of the wildly growing plant species and of target desirable genes is a prerequisite for this purpose. Five wild rose (Rosa L.) genotypes were collected from different locations in northern hilly areas of Pakistan for this study. Different morphological characteristics and PCR based random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique was used to find out the diversity and relationship among the genotypes.On morphological basis, Rosa webbiana collected from Muree and Nathia gali showed maximum (83%) similarity, whereas on DNA pattern basis, Rosa brunoniicollected from Bansra gali and Sunny bank showed maximum (72%) similarity, while R. webbiana showed maximum diversity among all the species.

Key words: Genetic diversity, morphological differences, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Rosa.