ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC VARIABILITY IN DIFFERENT CHRYSANTHEMUM VARIETIES OF PAKISTANUSING RAPD MARKERS

Twenty one Chrysanthemum cultivars of three groups i.e. Single chrysanthemum (Pompon, Korean, Spoon shaped), Semi double chrysanthemum, Double Chrysanthemum (Anemone, Reflex, Intermediate incurved, Irregular incurved, Regular incurved, Quill) were characterized by RAPD to understand the extent of genetic diversity and relatedness among them. Out of 25 RAPD primers screened, 10 were selected that produced a total of 87 bands, of which 71 were polymorphic with 8.7 bands per primer. The Jaccard Coefficients was used to calculate the genetic similarity. UPGMA was used to generate the dendrogram that clearly separated 21 Chrysanthemum cultivars into 3 main clusters. The average genetic similarity observed across all the cultivars was 0.57. Two types of Quill (Off-white and Dark brown) showed maximum similarity value of 0.95. Hence in the present study RAPDs proved them to be the marker of choice for the detection of variants in different hybrid combination of chrysanthemum including parents and offspring and in marker assisted selection in chrysanthemum breeding programs.