Genetic diversity of potato accessions revealed by simple sequence repeat makers

Abstract

Potato is one of the most economically important food crops worldwide. Information on the genetic diversity of a germplasm bank is necessary for potato breeding. In this study, genetic diversity of 62 potato accessions developed by ACI, Limited, Bangladesh, have been analyzed using 9 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. We identified 46 unique alleles for the 9 loci, with 93.5% showing polymorphism. The number of alleles ranged from three to eleven with the average being 7.3. The polymorphic information content per locus ranged from 0.621 to 0.888, with an average of 0.787. The accessions showed significant diversity since the calculated Jaccard’s similarity coefficient ranged from 0.182 to 0.778. Analysis using the unweighted pair-group method arithmetic average (UPGMA) grouped the accessions in 5 clusters. Evaluation of the SSR primers will help in future genetic diversity studies, while the diversity information will aid in parental selection in breeding programs.