Indian Journal of Plant Genetic Resources

A set of 40 accessions of Sesbania belonging to 13 Sesbania species were characterized by fractionating 6 isozyme systems on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). The isozyme systems studied were: acid phosphatase. amylase, catalase, glutamate dehydrogenase, peroxidase and malate dehydrogenase. These isozyme systems produced 193 polymorphic bands. A dendrogram was obtained using Jaccards similarity co-efficient and Unweighted Paired Group Method with Arithmetic Average (UPGMA) clustering method. Accessions were grouped into II clusters. Four accessions from S. rostrata species grouped together in the same cluster. Similar pattern of grouping was observed for S. aculeata accessions. An accession from S. macrantha species was uniquely isolated from rest of the clusters. However, there was no strict one to one relationship between botanical origin of accessions and their location in the dendrogram. The diversity analysis based on isozyme system may be used to identify diverse parents for inter and intraspecific hybridization in Sesbania.