Population structure and genetic diversity in bottle gourd [Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl.] germplasm from India assessed by ISSR markers

Genetic diversity analysis was undertaken in 42 geographically distant genotypes accessions of bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) from India northeastern (14) and northern region (28) using inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. A total of 209 amplified bands were obtained from 20 ISSR primers used in this study, of which 186 were polymorphic with 89.00 % band polymorphism. Various parameters namely, observed number of alleles, effective number of alleles, Nei's gene diversity/heterozygosity, resolving power, Shannon's information index and gene flow were estimated under experiment. Jaccard's similarity coefficient matrix was generated for pairwise comparisons between individual ISSR profiles and UPGMA cluster analysis based on this matrix showed clustering into six groups. Jaccard's coefficient of similarity values ranged from 0.409 to 0.847, with a mean of 0.628 revealing a moderate level of genetic diversity. The Bayesian model-based approach to infer hidden genetic population structures using the multilocus ISSR markers revealed two populations among the 42 genotypes. This is the first report on the assessment of genetic variation using ISSR markers in this medicinal vegetable plant, and this study of diversity analysis will be helpful in analyzing future hybrid breeding strategy and devising effective germplasm exploration and conservation strategy.