Abstract

Genetic diversity is of paramount importance for the success of any plant breeding program. An experiment was conducted to assess the extent of genetic diversity and similarity of 24 rice cultivars from various origins using 29 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. A total of 144 alleles were detected at the 29 SSR primer pairs evaluated in the 24 cultivars. The number of alleles per loci ranged from 3 to 8 with a mean of 4.966 alleles per locus. The mean unbiased expected hetrozygosity (UH_e) and expected hetrozygosity (H_e) were 0.674 and 0.659, respectively. Cluster analysis using UPGMA algorism divided the 24 cultivars into two major groups. Group I contained the two NERICA, all japonica, and a tropical japonica cultivar. Group II contained the NPT and all indica cultivars. The genetic diversity analysis showed the presence of higher allelic diversity in the cultivars analyzed. NERICA cultivars, which showed greater dissimilarity from all the other cultivars, could be used as parents in future breeding programs so as to come up with transgresive segregants.

Key words: Genetic diversity, hetrozygosity, NERICA, rice, simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers.