Evaluation of genetic diversity and relatedness among apple cultivars using RAPD and SSR markers

Twenty phenotypically different apple cultivars from the collection of Department of Fruit Science, YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, India, were analysed using 28 RAPD and 5 SSR primers to establish their genetic diversity, relatedness and verify parentage. The primer study revealed higher level of genetic diversity among the cultivars. The level of polymorphism across twenty cultivars was 65.6% and 71.4% from RAPD and SSR markers respectively. Primers OPA-16(RAPD), IISRS-3 and IISRS-18(SSR) were more informative due to the highest Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) value. Three RAPD primers were able to distinguish the cultivars. RAPD and SSR revealed different genetic similarities among apple cultivars. The highest similarity was detected between ‘Fuji’ and ‘Fuji Rekaki’ (0.859) followed by ‘Thanedar early flowering’ and ‘Fuji’ by RAPD while between ‘Galaxy’ and ‘Jonadel’ (1.000) followed by ‘Neomi’ with ‘Arlet’, ‘Fuji’ and ‘Royal Gala’; ‘Fuji Rekaki’ with ‘Thanedar early flowering’ and ‘Reinette-Du-Canada’ by SSR. The dendrograms from RAPD and SSR data were generated using UPGMA method which revealed four and five clusters respectively and showed that most of the cultivars clustered in accordance with the recorded pedigree information and polymorphism found with SSR primers was higher as compared to RAPD.