Screening of Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana) genotypes for Drought Tolerance and Assessment of Genetic Diversity through DNA based Molecular markers

Abstract

Present study was undertaken to screen the Finger-millet (Eleusine cC!racana) genotypes for drought Tolerance and assessment of genetic diversity with the help of 18 RAPD primers and 20 ISSR molecular markers. Seven different levels of Polyethylene glycot ·(PEG) 6000 (5%, 8%, 11%, 14%, 18%, 20%and 25%) were used to create the osmotic stress, which reveal that PRM 6 I I 5 shows maximum germination, PRM 8105 shows maximum root length, PRM 61 07 shows maximum shoot length, PRM 81 05 shows maximum total length, PRM 8124 shows maximum root fresh weight, PRM 8104 shows maximum shoot fresh weight and total fresh weight, PRM 6124 shows maximum root dry weight, PM 6115 shows maximum shoot dry weight, PRM 8124 shows maximum total dry weight and PRM 6107 shows maximum tolerance index. And in genetic diversity analysis, two types of molecular, Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR), were assayed. In RAPD analysis PIC values varies from 0.658779 (OPK-11 F) to 0.965706 (35 ME l OT23) with average of0.8122425 and resolving power varies from 0.3704(35 ME IOT23) to 4.0741 (OPJ- 13F) with average of 2.222. PIC value for ISSR ranged from 0.1426611 (ISSR-3) to 0.982853224 (ISSR-8) with an average value of 0.562757162. The resolving power varied between 0.5185 (ISSR-8) and 11.5556 (ISSR-1 OF) with an average value of 6.1481. The analysis indicated that ISSR expressed maximum resolving power and RAPD gave maximum PIC values. Thus the two molecular marker systems together provided wider genome coverage and were found to be better indicator of the genetic relationships