MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION AND ESTIMATION OF GENETIC DIVERSITY OF SORGHUM ACCESSIONS BY SSR MARKERS

Abstract

Sorghum ranks 5th in the cereal’s crops having 60 million tonnes annual production. it is important food, feed as well as forage crop and provides raw material for fibbers, biofuel, starch and alcohol. It is very diverse crop; therefore, genetic fingerprints require for the estimation of diversity. The present study was conducted to develop fingerprints and for the estimation of genetic diversity through morphological and molecular characterization. Genetic divergence pattern was assessed among 82 sorghum accessions by evaluating the 9 different parameters for growing season. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that all parameters had significant differences. The Principal Component analysis showed that 1st three Principal Components (PCs) having eigen value >1 and shared 29.95% variability and 26.57% variation for all parameters. Correlation exhibited that leaf width, plant height, and panicle length had positive correlation with leaf length. Biplot analysis exhibited that plant height, leaf length, grain number/panicle and 100-grain weight had positive and positive coordinates while none of the parameters lies in negative and negative coordinates. The molecular relationship among 96 sorghum accessions was estimated through 16 SSRs markers techniques. Analysis revealed that 99 alleles were analyzed by SSRs. Maximum allelic frequency was observed 1 at locus Sorg6 and Sorg11. Polymorphic information content (PIC) showed that locus Sorg16 had maximum value (0.88) while maximum heterozygosity was 0.85 at locus Sorg5. Dendrogram was constructed on 96 accessions by 16 SSRs and analysis revealed that 30 morphotypes were produced. This study depicted that SSRs had discriminating power for the estimation of genetic diversity. In addition, the sorghum germplasm showed maximum diversity in Pakistan climate season.  

Keyword: Sorghum, SSRs, Biplot, Genetic diversity, PCA