Assessment of diversity in Garcinia indica (Dupetit-Thouars.) Choisy. using morphological and molecular markers

摘要

Garcinia indica (Dupetit-Thouars.) Choisy. is an endemic plant in the southern Western Ghats. Although endemic species show low levels of genetic diversity, morphological variations abound in G. indica . Genetic diversity of G. indica plants collected from four locations in Maharashtra were evaluated at inter and intra-population levels using morphological traits and molecular markers. Leaf length and plant height showed profound variability. Plants exhibited less diversity within the population when screened by molecular markers like RAPD and ISSR. In case of RAPD primers, the highest diversity was observed for the Sawantwadi population (19.93%), intermediate variation in Diveagar (8.11%), low variation in Chiplun (5.20%), and least variability in Dapoli populations (4.10%). Similarly, 10 ISSR primers expressed 11.37% variation in Sawantwadi region, 9.20% in Dive-agar, 4.70% in Dapoli, and only 1.20% in Chiplun. There were small pockets, e.g., Dive-agar or Otavane in Sawantwadi in which the plants showed diversity at both morphological as well as molecular levels, implying the need to conserve the germplasm of these populations.