Molecular diversity study on dessert banana genotypes (Musa spp.) from Odisha using ISSR markers

Banana is an important fruit of India and in Odisha it is also a highly demanded fruit. Banana improvement programme mainly depends on genetic variability present in the population. The present investigation was done to assess the molecular diversity present amongst the local dessert banana genotypes of Odisha along with some national released cultivars based on Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) markers. For the present study ten ISSR primers were used to differentiate 22 banana genotypes. Total seventy six scorable fragments were obtained, out of which 36 (47.4%) were polymorphic and 39 (51.3%) were monomorphic. Similarity index were estimated using the Dice coefficient of similarity (Nei and Li 1979). The genetic similarity values ranged from 0.71 to 0.96. At 90% phenon level 22 genotypes were distributed in fourteen clusters. The results revealed twenty five percent variability at genetic level based on ten ISSR markers which could be utilised for further banana improvement programme.

• ISSR markers were used to characterize and compare the local dessert banana genotypes of Odisha with the national released cultivars showing that this technique could be successfully adopted to identify the local banana germplasm of Odisha.