Assessment of genetic variability in terminali a chebula using rapd markers

Eighty-three bands ranging from 300 bp to 3 kb, consistent, unambiguous and repeatable, produced from selected primers were used for estimating the genetic diversity and relatedness among the Terminalia chebula trees from five provenances of Karnataka. Out of 83 bands, 62 were polymorphic and 21 were monomorphic. The dendrogram was constructed by Ward'S method of clustering using minimum variance algorithum (Ward, 1963). The five provenances of T. chebula were clustered into two groups at a distance of 44 units on dendrogram with Shimoga and Arasikere spanning the extremes with all other provenances distributed in between them. RAPD analysis revealed that the genetic diversity of five provenances was medium with Shimoga and Channapattana being 47% dissimilar, while BR hills and Arasikere differed only by 28%.