Diversity Analysis and Identification of RAPD Markers in Relation to Sugar Accumulation in Sugarcane

The genomic DNA of six high sugar varieties (CoC 671, CoM 0254, Co 94012, MS 202, CoM 9908 and Q 63) and a low sugar variety CoM 0251 were amplified using 20 RAPD primers in order to identify their diversity. The result showed that all the primers produced polymorphic bands. However, based on percent polymorphism eleven primers (OPB-01, OPB-02, OPB03, OPB-04, OPB 07, OPB 09, OPB-11, OPB-12, OPB-13, OPB-14, OPB-16, OPB-18 and OPB-20) were found to be most informative. In the present investigation, eight amplified products were obtained using primers OPB 02 (1827, 1524, 883 bp); OPB 03 (1456 bp); OPB 04 (881 bp); OPB 07 (1889 bp, 946 bp) and OPB 09 (2001 bp) which were consistently present in six high sugar varieties and found to be absent in low sugar variety. A variety, Q 63 is quite often used as a parent in sugarcane breeding programme aimed at evolving high sugar varieties. Primer OPB-08 and OPB-03 showed a distinct band of ∼550 bp and ∼750 bp, respectively, in CoC 671, Co 94012 and Q 63. Q 63 is one of the parents of CoC 671 and Co 94012 is a somaclonal variety of CoC 671. Dice Similarity Coefficient revealed similarity index range from 0.513 to 0.710. Consensus tree indicates that the seven sugarcane varieties studied fall into three clusters. The low sugar content variety CoM 0251 was found to be most distinct and formed an independent cluster. The study suggest that converting the sequence information of these amplified products into SCAR marker can definitely help in reliable screening of sugarcane genotypes.