Identification of Polymorphic SSR Markers Linked with Fusarium wilt Resistance Loci in Various Genotypes of Chickpea to Develop Sustainable Variety

Chickpea is the World's third most widely grown food legume. Over 65% of chickpea consumption occurs in India. In India, one of the main constraints for increasing yield is the susceptibility of the plant to the vascular disease Fusarium wilt. The present investigation was carried out with objectives of molecular diversity analysis among chickpea genotype differing for Fusarium wilt resistance using simple sequence repeat (SSR) for selection of better wilt-resistant genotype of chickpea. We tested SSR primer pairs linked to Fuserium wilt resistance loci in various chickpea genotypes. The polymorphic information content (PIC) of each SSR marker was determined and similarity matrices were utilised to construct the UPGMA (unweighted pair group method with arithmetic average) dendrograms. The range of PIC scores of SSR markers ranged between 0.5429 and 0.8007. Gene diversity is varied from 0.6224 to 0.8240. A very low level of heterozygosity (%) was detected in the investigated materials, i.e. 0.00 to 0.0328%. There is significant correlation between gene diversity and PIC value (r=0.989; P>0.0001). Thus, SSR markers can be used for identification of wilt-resistant genotype of chickpea as donor to develop new wilt-resistant variety in particular geographical area.