Characterization of acid lime genotypes using SSR markers

The determination of genetic variation at morphological and molecular level is of fundamental importance to the citrus breeders for the development of elite cultivars with desirable traits. This paper aimed to study the genetic diversity among seventy acid lime landraces using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The results revealed a wide range of diversity in 70 genotypes in terms of fruit weight (30.50–56.26 g), juice (29.01–57.13%), acidity (6.18–8.35%), and ascorbic acid (22.22–36.81 mg/100 ml juice). Twenty-five SSR markers were used to detect polymorphism among these genotypes. A total of 99 alleles were detected with an average of 4.71 alleles per locus. Polymorphism information content ranged between 0.41 (TAA15) to 0.93 (CT19) with an average of 0.73 and polymorphism ranged from 33.33 to 66.67% with an average of 50.95%. The markers were able to distributed the genotypes into two major clusters. The Jaccard's genetics similarity value varied from 0.08 to 0.60. Highest genetic similarity index was observed between JMU-Sum (58) and JMU-Sun (61) (0.60). However, least similarity index was observed between JMU-Jib (36) and JMU-Balli (30) (0.08). Out of all the selected genotypes, JMU-Nag (70) and JMU-Jib (36) were found most promising genotypes, and can be suggested for use in further breeding programmes.