Genetic relatedness among indigenous and exotic cultivars of lentil based on RAPD, SSRs and morphological traits

Abstract

Lentil (Lens culinaris) is the second most important cool season legume crop of India after chickpea. In India mostly pilosae types of lentil are grown and released cultivars have narrow genetic base [1 ]. The development of various PCR based molecular markers has enabled to characterize genotypes and measure their genetic relationship [2- 4]. RAPD (randomly amplified polymorphic DNA) markers have been used in identification of cultivars and for assessing genetic diversity in several legume crops like mungbean [5], pea [6], chickpea [7] etc. Microsatellites marker are codominant markers, usually single locus, which is often multi-allelic because of high mutation rate [8]. lnder et al. [9] constructed a DNA fingerprinting database for 10 Lens genotypes using STMS markers. In addition to molecular markers, information from morphological traits can also be integrated to provide comprehensive knowledge of relatedness as studied by Dikshit et al. [1 O] in Vigna spp. The present study was undertaken to estimate genetic relationship among ten lentil genotypes (Table 1) of diverse nature in respect to seed size, origin and wilt reaction using RAPD and SSR markers along with morphological traits.