Assessment of Genetic Diversity among Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) Genotypes using Molecular Markers

The cultivated peanut, Arachis hypogaea L. is an important source crop for edible oil and protein. It is important to identify the genetic diversity of peanut genetic resources for cultivar development and evaluation of peanut accessions. In this study, three marker based techniques (RAPD, SSR and ISSR) were evaluated for potential use in fingerprinting and determination of the genetic diversity between 12 groundnut genotypes. 30 RAPD, 10 ISSR and 10 SSR primers were used from which a total of 39 (22 RAPDs, 9 ISSRs and 8 SSRs) polymorphic primers revealed 93.32%, 79.70% and 68.75% polymorphism, respectively among the groundnut genotypes. Each of the three molecular marker systems can distinguish all the cultivars. Moreover, the dendrogram based on combined RAPD, ISSR and SSR data organised the 12 genotypes into various clusters. The PIC (Polymorphic Index Content) varied from 0.4–0.8 in RAPD, 0.7–0.9 in ISSR and 0.1–0.7 in SSR. The RAPD, ISSR and SSR markers were found to be useful for cultivar identification and assessment of phenetic relationships, revealing advantages with higher reproducibility. Thus, molecular markers are useful in the assessment of peanut diversity, the detection of duplicate sample in germplasm collection and the selection of a core collection to enhance the efficiency of germplasm management for use in peanut breeding and conservation.