Assessment of Spine Gourd (Momordica dioica Roxb.) with Cross-species Transferable Microsatellite and ISSR Markers

Spine gourd (Momordica dioica Roxb.) is a highly nutritious and underutilized potential vegetable containing high amount of protein as compared to other cucurbitaceous vegetables. The present study was under maker to identify and develop the molecular markers for genetic diversity study in spine gourd. In this regard, total 94 (24 M. dioica, 50 M. charatia, 10 Cucumis sativus, 10 C. melo) nucleotide sequences were obtained from national center for biotechnology information (NCBI) platform followed by extraction of desirable sequences by Batch primer 3. Out of 94 simple sequence repeats (SSR) sequences, 52 were amplified with spine gourd genotype. However, only seven SSRs were polymorphic and useful for diversity study from the 52 markers. In addition, 10 ISSR markers were also evaluated for genotyping and genetic diversity study. SSR markers were produced 2.42 average alleles per primer, whereas inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR) markers were produced 4.6 average alleles per primer. The average polymorphism information content (PIC) value for SSR markers was 0.32 and for ISSR was 0.73. SSR markers based cluster analysis revealed two major cluster of 41 genotypes in which highest dissimilarity was obtained between genotypes PK-49 and NDM-3 at 60% Jaccard’s similarity coefficient. Similarly, ISSR markers based diversity analysis also grouped the 41 genotypes into two clusters in which highest dissimilarity was recorded between PK-35 and PMD-5-1 at 66% dissimilarity level. Diverse genotypes will be very useful in cross-breeding programmes. Molecular markers identified through this study can be used for further crop improvement activities.