Genetic diversity studies in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) genotypes using SSR markers

Thirty simple sequence repeat molecular markers were used to study the genetic diversity among 50 chickpea genotypes. Twenty seven markers revealed polymorphism, while three were observed to show the monomorphic amplicons. The polymorphic markers produced a total of 81 alleles with an average of 3.0 alleles per locus. Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) value ranged from 0.327 to 0.736; and the markers TA 64, TA 46, TR 7 and TA 28 were suitable for discriminating the genotypes owing to their high PIC values. UPGMA cluster analysis based on matching similarity indices grouped these 50 genotypes into twelve clusters. The highest Jaccard’s similarity coefficient (0.94) was observed between ICC 89228 and ICC 86466, whereas IG 593-1 and ICC 88503 showed the lowest similarity coefficient (0.30) between them. The clustering pattern indicated the presence of wide genetic diversity between the genotypes. The present study found that SSR markers were powerful tool in revealing genetic diversity and relationships in chickpea genotypes, thereby providing useful means for selection of parents in breeding programmes.