Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding (The)

In the present study, estimation of genetic diversity and identification of pigeonpea cultivars and breeding lines has been done using 121 RAPD primers, among which 20 were polymorphic. A total of 1193 bands were obtained and 900 (75.4%) showed polymorphism between cultivars. On an average 9.85 bands per primer were obtained. Cluster analysis based on Jaccard's similarity coefficient using UPGMA grouped all the cultivars into three major clusters. The clustering was strongly supported by high bootstrap values. The arithmetic mean heterozygosity (H_av) value, the average heterozygosity for polymorphic markers (H_av) p value and marker index (MI) was found to be 0.499, 0.661 and 4.917 respectively. The genotype specific bands can provide information to separate pigeonpea cultivars among the 24 studied, which can definitely be of great help in pigeonpea cultivar identification for cultivar-right-protection.