Abstract

Thirty (30) simple sequence repeat (SSR) primer pairs chosen randomly from the SSR primer collection were used to detect polymorphism in 17 sugarcane accessions. A total of 62 DNA fragments were generated by the 30 primers with an average of about 2.14 bands per primer. Bands that a primer yielded in the study ranged from 1 to 4. The genetic distances for SSR data using 17 sugarcane accessions, was constructed based on Nei (1978) and relationships between accessions were portrayed graphically in the form of a dendrogram. The value of genetic similarity ranging from 62.90 to 90.30% was observed among the 17 sugarcane accessions. The highest genetic similarity of 90.03% was seen among genotypes S-2003-US-118 and S-2003-US-312. From the present study, it may be concluded that SSRs markers are best tool for investigation of genetic diversity in sugarcane.

Key words: Simple sequence repeat (SSR), polymorphism, genetic diversity.