Genetic diversity of Persea bombycina from goalpara district of Assam, India

Assam of the northeastern region of India is unique in terms of its rich biodiversity and multiple ethnicity of its people. The impact of the resultant socio-religio-cultural diversity is also reflected in the diverse traditional ways of silkworm farming. We report the genetic diversity of Persea bombycina “Som” from different locations of Goalpara district of Assam, India, where random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) marker was used in this study. RAPD analyses of ten genotypes of “Som” from Goalpara district of Assam, India with B19 RAPD primer generated 86 bands, showing an average of 8.6 bands per sample and 30.2% (26 bands) of these were polymorphic. The number of bands per accession ranged from 5 to 10 with a mean of 8.6 and the size range of the amplified bands was 250 - 6000 bp. In a UPGMA phenetic dendrogram based on Jaccard’s coefficient, the P. bombycina accessions showed a high level of genetic variation, as indicated by genetic similarity and revealed 10 “Som” genotypes in to three major clusters. This study may be useful in identifying diverse genetic stocks of P. bombycina, which may then be conserved on a priority basis. The RAPD primer used in this study was able to distinguish all the 10 genotypes of “Som” plants, which can be used to assess genetic diversity.