Molecular characterization and genetic diversity of Indian potato, (Solanum tuberosum L.) germplasms using microsatellite and RAPD markers

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is the fourth most important food crop in the world and an important vegetable crop. The genus Solanum consists of 220 tuber containing species of which seven tuber-bearing species is used for commercial cultivation. Potato is a self-pollinated crop with cross-pollination up to 2.54 percent. Use of molecular markers to determine genetic variation, genetic diversity and evolutionary relatedness is becoming more popular for the assessment of diversity among cultivars of crop species of from various geographical origins. In the present study, total 42 RAPD markers have been employed, out of which 21 primers were polymorphic with 66.95% average polymorphism and 0.783 average PIC value, indicating higher informativeness of primers. In the present study, total 25 SSR markers have been employed out of these only 4 potent SSR primers were polymorphic. For SSR markers, average polymorphism was 58.33% and mean PIC value was 0.712. The results of current study indicate that RAPD and SSR markers used in the study have very promising polymorphism and PIC values hence, seemed to be good for the molecular characterization and assessing genetic relationship among genotypes of potato.