Molecular Diversity Among Sesame Varieties Of Tamil Nadu

Fourteen Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) markers were used to estimate the molecular genetic diversity among 10 sesame varieties cultivated in Tamil Nadu. The 14 ISSR primers in 10 sesame genotypes yielded 66 reproducible amplified bands. The number of amplified bands varied from 1 to 7. Out of 66 bands, 65 were polymorphic (98.5%). Average number of bands and polymorphic bands per primer were 4.7 and 4.6 respectively. The polymorphic information content (PIC) value ranged between 0.50 and 0.85. NTSYS-pc (ver 2.02) software was used to calculate the Jaccard’s similarity coefficients. The maximum similarity was observed between VRI 1 and VRI 2 followed by Paiyur 1 and TMV 6 and less similarity between VRI 1 and SVPR 1. Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean (UPGMA) cluster analysis grouped the 10 genotypes in to five groups at 0.60 similarity coefficient. Varieties CO 1, SVPR 1 and TMV 7 were clustered in to three separate clusters indicating most divergent among the released varieties of Tamil Nadu.