Genetic diversity analysis in indigenous deep-water rice of Assam using RAPD and ISSR markers

Abstract

Deep-water rices, locally known as bao and asra, are an important crop in flood plains of Brahmaputra valley and Barak valley of Assam. Farmers are still growing different deep-water rice landraces, which constitute an important source of genetic variation for utilization in breeding programme of high yielding deep-water rice varieties with tolerance to flooding. So, conservation and characterization of these landraces is an important step towards this direction. The use of molecular markers is considered superior over morphological markers for analysis of genetic diversity and variety identification because some inherent problems of the later. There is very little information available on the nature and extent of genetic diversity in deep-water rice of Assam, particularly that based on molecular markers. This information is quite valuable for rationalization of deepwater rice germplasm conservation and their utilization in a breeding programme. Hence, the present study was conducted to understand the pattern of genetic variability in few deep-water rice accessions based on Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and Inter-Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) markers.