Molecular Genetic Diversity Analysis of Commercial Mango (Mangifera indica L.) Cultivars Employed as Parents in Hybrid Development in India

Mango hybridization programmes use commercial cultivars as parents. Twenty three such popular cultivars of mango belonging to different regions of India were analyzed by employing multi-locus marker techniques to measure the genetic diversity existing among them. Twelve unanchored ISSR primers (114 markers) and 15 AFLP primer-pair combinations (1,073 markers) revealed average gene diversity over loci to be 0.231 and 0.257 respectively. Mango cultivars from southern India were found to be significantly different (p<0.001). In order to decipher how these markers are inherited, three popular hybrids ‘Amrapali’, ‘Mallika’ and ‘Ratna’ were compared with their parents for band sharing information. Number of ISSR markers shared between pairs of parents and their hybrid was nearly 20% more than that of AFLP markers, endorsing the conserved nature of ISSR profiles. Our observations on (i) genetic relatedness among popular cultivars and (ii) band sharing pattern among parents and hybrids have implications on mango germplasm collection and breeding activities.