Characterization of Indian Mustard Germplasm on the Basis of Morphological Traits and SSR Markers

The genus Brassica is one of the most important oil seed crops in India with high degree of genetic diversity. In present study, genetic diversity was studied in forty germplasm lines and eight cultivars of Indian mustard using morphological traits and SSR markers. Morphological characters were taken for days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height (cm), length of main raceme (cm), number of primary branches/plant, number of secondary branches/plant, number of silique per plant, number of seeds per silique, 1000 seed weight (g) and seed yield per plant (g). Total 50 SSR markers were used for characterization of these lines, out of which 7 SSR markers were highly polymorphic between all the germplasms of mustard. An UPGMA phonogram was constructed for all 48 Germplasms and the similarity coefficient ranged from 0.00 to 0.91. Number of alleles ranged from 3 to 4, genetic diversity ranged from 71% to 65% with average value of 67%, heterozygosity raged from 20 to 10% with average of 12% and PIC value for markers ranged from 0.65 to 0.59 with mean PIC value 0.61. All seven SSR primers showed PIC value above 0.5 (50%) indicating high genetic diversity in the studied plant material.