Molecular characterization of biodiversity in vegetables - a review

Diverse genetic resources are prerequisite for any crop improvement programme, aimed at high and stable yields. In this review, the diverse molecular techniques, based on PCR, non-PCR, restriction followed by PCR and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) used in assessing plant genetic diversity in vegetables are discussed. Molecular tools provide valuable data on diversity through their ability to detect variation at the DNA level. Differences in gene sequence can be directly observed and described, a degree of precision previously impossible to achieve. These techniques are well established and their advantages as well as limitations have been realized and described in this work along with their applications in assessing genetic diversity in vegetable crops viz. genetic base of germplasm, predicting agronomic behavior and phylogeny. Advanced marker techniques tend to amalgamate advantageous features of several basic techniques, in order to increase the sensitivity and resolution to detect genetic discontinuity and distinctiveness.