Morphological and Molecular Characterization Of Chrysanthemum (Dendranthema Grandiflora Tzvelev) Germ Plasm

Abstract

An investigation entitled "Morphological and molecular characterization of chrysanthemum (Dendranthema grandiflora Tzvelev) germplasm" was carried out at HRC of SVPUA&T, Meerut in RBD with three replications during 2010-11 and 2011-12 along with P.G. Lab. of Deptt. of Fingerprinting to study the genetic variability, interrelationship and genetic divergence in thirty eight genotypes of chrysanthemum. The studied involves PCV&GCV, heritability & genetic advance, correlation & path coefficients analysis and genetic divergence (02 ) based on fourteen morphological quantitative characters under two environments as well as combined over environments (pool data of both environments). Diversity in genotypes, using 10 primers of RAPD molecular marker was also analyzed. Studies revealed highly significant differences among the genotypes for all the characters. The estimates of PCV were found higher than GCV for all the studied traits. The heritability estimates in broad sense and genetic advance were high for number of flowers per plant, flower diameter and peduncle length of terminal flower. Number of flower per plant showed highly positive and significant correlation with plant spread and number of primary branches per plant, whereas, length of outer ray florets, plant height, leaf length, leaf width, peduncle length of terminal flower, peduncle thickness of terminal flower and length of lower lobe of leaf had positive and significant correlation with flower diameter at genotypic and phenotypic levels under all the environments. The path coefficient analysis at genotypic levels revealed high positive and direct influence of leaf width and leaf length-Width ratio towards flower yield per plant. Genetic divergence studies grouped all the genotypes into seven diverse clusters under all the environments. Clustering pattern changed with the environments which indicated that D2-statistics are highly influenced by the· environments. Maximum genetic divergence was observed for number of flowers per plant, flower diameter and peduncle length of terminal flower. All the genotypes were grouped into two main clusters with RAPD marker, cluster I consists 18 genotypes and cluster II consists 19 genotypes. The cultivar Sharadmala did not clustered with other cultivars. Only two genotypes i.e. Yellow Gold and Yellow Reflex reflected h.igher levels of similarity among them whereas, minimum similarity was noticed between Sharadmala and Aparajita which concluded that RAPD markers were more robust and efficiently detected the minor differences in the genomic DNA which was the basis of molecular characterization of the genotypes. For evaluating marker efficiency, PIC value and resolving power were found maximum for primer OPK-11. The clustering based on STRUCTURE analysis was found to be in congruence with the distance based clustering as shown in dendrogram except one (Flirt). The cultivar Sharadmala and Ravi Kiran in subpopulation 2 and Neelima, Jubilee and Flirt in subpopulation 1 showed some extent admixture of each other. Over all, divergence study suggested that crosses involving genotypes Kundan, Liliput and Yellow Charm with Star Pink and Kanchil Wowlcl be tr~nsgressive . Similarly crosses involving genotypes Sadbhavana, Yellow Charm and Lilipwt With Yellow Reflex, Star Pink, Star White and Kanchil should be made for getting desired transgres~nts.