Authors:K. Priya , E.P. Indira, V. B. Sreekumar and C. Renuka
Abstract:Calamus vattayila Renuka is one of the medium sized rattans to the Western Ghats of India. We have investigated the genetic variation of three populations of this species using ISSR markers. ISSRs generated a total of 46 markers with 9 primers, of which of 41.3% in Nelliampathy, 39.13% in Kallar and 28.3% in Sholayar were polymorphic fragments with amplicon size ranging from 250 to 2000 bp. The gene diversity was 0.167 in Nelliampathy, 0.163 in Kallar and 0.118 in Sholayar with a total genetic diversity (Ht) of 0.238 among populations. Majority of the genetic diversity was distributed within populations (61.07%) and only (38.93%) was among populations. The percentage of total genetic differentiation (38.3%) among the three populations was relatively higher than the mean reported in many other species. The genetic distance between populations ranged from 0.0794 to 0.2246 and the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averaging (UPGMA) cluster analysis and Dolloparsimony tree, showed the tendency of the individuals to group according to the geographical localities. The genetic differentiation and total gene diversity among the populations of C. vattayila were significantly high, indicating the importance for conservation of germplasm representing individuals from all the populations. The result also indicates the possibility of inbreeding in C.vattayila.
Keywords:Genetic variation, ISSR markers, rattans, Western Ghats