Genetic diversity among cultivated and wild germplasm of cucumber based on RAPD analysis

Seventeen germplasm of cucumber including gynoecious parthenocarpic lines, standard monoecious varieties and wild progenitor C. satiuvs var. hardwickii accessions were classified into five different groups on the basis of RAPD marker showing enough genetic diversity among them. The lowest similarity value based on Jaccard's coefficient was estimated between gynoeciopus partehenocarpic line PCUCP 3 and standard monoecious genotype PCUC 8 (0.39) which indicated that these two were the most divergent. All four gynoeciopus parthenocarpic fruited genotypes were grouped together and formed a separate cluster implicating higher similarity among them. Two genotypes, namely Kashmir Local and PCUC 28 from diverse geographical regions were grouped in a common cluster II. Four accessions belonging to C. sativus var. hardwickii have been grouped together in cluster IV. However, genotypes from both Cucumis sativus and C. sativus var. hardwickii were included in a common cluster III. A single genotype IC 277054 of C. sativus var. hardwickii was alone in cluster V, which was from Sholapur, Maharashtra while all other accessions of C. satiuvs var. hardwickii were from north western Himalayan region.