MOLECULAR DIVERSITY OF RICE GERMPLASM GROWN UNDER HIGH ALTITUDE CONDITIONS

Thirty genotypes of rice (Oryza sativa L.) well genetically maintained at MRCFC, SKUAST-Kashmir were used to carry out molecular diversity using SSR markers in molecular Botany lab. NEHU Shillong (NEHU), India during 2015-16, under the Summer Research Fellow Fellowship, INSA, Bangalore, India. The SSR markers were multiallelic & detected 70 alleles in the set of germplasm lines of rice, with number of alleles/locus ranged from two (sd1)to eight (RM580), with a average of 0.488 alleles/locus. The PIC value ranged from 0.36 (RM16301) to 0.767 (RM580) with average of 0.49. Similarly the gene diversity were observed highest in RM580 (0.792) while as the lowest GD revealed by RM16301 (0.41). The cluster analysis based on UPGMA have revealed that the similarity coefficients shown by the eighteen SSR markers ranged from 0.05 to 0.77 and the similarity values obtained were used to construct the dendrogram, which classified all the genotypes into three broad clusters. Among the 30 germplasm lines studied, the lowest similarity index for each pair wise comparison was recorded between the genotypes GS-578 vs GS-559 (0.05) ,GS- 559 vs GS-579 (0.05), GS-539 vs GS-511(0.05), GS-537 vs GS-511(0.11) and GS-580 vs GS511 (0.11) whereas the highest similarity index were recorded by the genotypes GS-537 vs GS-580 and GS-539 vs GS-509 (0.77).The diverse germplasm lines can be crossed with the existing varieties to give rise to novel gene & trait combination and to select parental materials for further hybridization in inbred parents or tester for maximizing heterotic response and identify materials that should be maintained to preserve maximum genetic diversity in rice germplasm.