Indian Journal of Agricultural Biochemistry

Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was performed for the assessment of genetic relationships in tobacco varieties grown in West Bengal. Eleven accessions including released and local varieties belonging to two species viz., Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica were characterized by using 18 arbitrary primers in RAPD. Eighteen random primers generated 152 amplicons, of which 135 were polymorphic (92.46%) indicating higher per cent of polymorphism across the two species. The level of polymorphism among the varieties of N. tabacum was 29.92%, which was less than the level observed in the other accessions of species N. rustica (35.05%). The average Jaccard’s similarity coefficient of 0.79 and 0.82 respectively in N. rustica and N. tabacum revealed low level of genetic diversity. The dendrogram generated by UPGMA could group all the accessions into distinct clusters based on species specificity. RAPD markers provided sufficient resolution to distinguish among closely related tobacco types.