Estimation of genetic diversity in Terminalia Arjuna genotypes represents the different agroclimatic regions of India

A measure of genetic diversity among nine populations of Terminalia arjuna collected from different agro-climatic regions was estimated by the fingerprints developed by Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) primers. Out of thirty primers, eleven primers produced total of 78 bands with 7.09 loci per primer and 77.6 percentage of polymorphism.A piece of good polymorphic information content (PIC) was given by the all 11 primers among the populations (mean PIC = 0.23). Higher sum of square (SS=3149.08), variance components (VC= 12.02), variance (partitioned) percentage (V%= 96.75) and fixation index (FST= 0.326) for sub-populations (states) to total population (germplasm) was observed within the population. The highest polymorphism was estimated in the population collected from Madhya Pradesh (MP) followed by Jharkhand(JH)(P%=89.7) while lowest in the population collected from Odisha (OD) (P%=53.8). The highest allele number (Na), Effective allele number (Ne), gene diversity (GE) and Shannon's information index (I) was estimated for the population belonging to Madhya Pradesh (Na=1.89, Ne= 1.69, GE=0.38, and I=0.55). Maximum and minimum Nei's genetic distance was among the accessions of Assam (AS) -Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Andhra Pradesh (AP) -Madhya Pradesh States (AP-UP= 0.3136 and AP-MP= -0.0086). Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean(UPGMA) dendrogram based on Nei's genetic distance of RAPD markers for clustering shows that Assam and Madhya Pradesh accessions are highly diverse and genetically dissimilar whereas Madhya Pradesh-Maharashtra accessions are less diverse and show genetic similarities.