Assessment of Genetic Diversity of Indigenous Glutinous Rice Genotypes of Assam using SSR Marker

Rice is considered as the best staple food among all cereals. In the present investigation, sixty five polymorphic SSR primers generated a total of 354 alleles. The number of alleles detected by a primer ranged from 2 (RM 105 and RM 171) to 9 (RM 311) with an average of 4.75 alleles per locus. The highest PIC (0.995) was recorded in RM 206 of chromosome 6 and the lowest PIC (0.613) was recorded in RM 171 of chromosome 2. SSR generated an average similarity of 0.294 which ranged from 0.061 (between ‘Lothow Bora and Kmj Bora74) to 0.790 (between ‘Poita Bora 2 and Pakhiloga Bora). Cophenetic correlation studies revealed that SSR data had a good fit (r = 0.81170). The dendrogram classified the rice germplasm under study into two main clusters with around 19 per cent similarity. In spite of the high variability, SSR markers used could not produce unique alleles for the genotypes studied. Incorporation of more germplasm, analysis for their nutritional parameters along with good agronomic traits and use of more SSR markers would help to find suitable germplasm for the rice breeding programme.