Assessment of Genetic Diversity in Wild Rice of Eastern India Using SSR Markers

Abstract

Wild rice is an important reservoir of valuable and useful genes. O. rufipogon and O. nivara contain AA genome andare the progenitor of cultivated rice which makes them compatible with the cultivated rice for cross breeding to incorporate the genes for stress tolerance. SSR markers were used to assess the extent of diversity of 26 accessions of O. rufipogon and O. nivara collected from different districts of Orissa, West Bengal and Tripura. The Principal Co-ordinate Analysis (PCA) clearly indicates the clustering pattern and inter-relationships among different accessions. Mantel Z-testexhibitedacorrelation between cophenetic matrix and Jaccards’ similarity coefficient in 26 accessions and 4 CRRI released varieties using 54 STMS (SSR) markers which showed significant correlation (r = 0.8249) between them. O. nivara accessions and O. rufipogon accessions were grouped different clusters. O. nivara collected from Midnapore is placed in different cluster. It is concluded that the SSR markers used were found to be equally informative for the genetic diversity study between and among the accessions of two wild species such as O. rufipogon and O. nivara collected from different locations of Orissa, West Bengal & Tripura. Highlysignificant morphological variations were also observed among O. nivara and O. rufipogon accessions.