Morphological and Molecular Characterization of Indian Mustard Germplasm Lines

The purposes of current investigation were to use a set of SSR molecular markers to detect DNA polymorphism among cultivated Brassica juncea accessions. The estimation of genetic diversity is not only imperative in crop improvement programmes but also for the competent management and conservation of prevailing genetic variability. Genetic diversity was investigated in forty germplasm lines along with eight cultivars of Indian mustard employing different morphological parameters viz., days to 50% flowering and maturity, plant height (cm), length of main raceme (cm), number(s) of primary and secondary branches/plants, number(s) of siliques per plant and seeds per silique, 1000 seed weight (g) and seed yield per plant (g) as well as 50 SSR molecular markers in preliminary investigation, out of which 7 SSR molecular markers were found to be highly polymorphic between all the genotypes of mustard and were employed in an advance research.

An UPGMA phonogram was constructed for all 48 genotypes and the similarity coefficient arrayed between 0.00 to 0.91. Number of alleles ranged from 3 to 4, genetic diversity in between 71% to 65% with a mean worth of 67%, heterozygosity varied between10 to 20 % with an average value of 12% and PIC value for markers ranged between 0.65 to 0.59 with a mean worth of 0.61. All seven SSR primers exhibited PIC value above 0.5 (50%) demonstrating high genetic diversity in the studied genetic stock.