Genetic improvement mainly depends

Genetic improvement mainly depends on the extent of genetic variability present in the population. The molecular
marker is a useful tool for assessing genetic variations and resolving cultivar identities. The objective of this study
was to evaluate the genetic divergence of 30 rice varieties (Basmati, Non-Basmati, Aerobic) using 10 ISSR, RAPD
markers each. The diversity or similarities and dissimilarities between all thirty rice varieties were calculated using 0
1 sheets. SSR primers RM-263 is highly informative since it recorded high PIC value (0.995). The resolving power
varies between 0.132(RM-256) to 4.662(RM-222) with an average value of 2.7502. In RAPD analysis PIC values
varies from 0.811(OPD-08) to 0.9925(OPF-13) with average of 0.9635 and resolving power varies from 1.32(OPJ-08)
to 2.066(OPJ-13) with average of 1.8256. In ISSR analysis, PIC value ranged from 0.8791(ISSR6) to 0.9916(ISSR5)
with an average value of 0.9482. The resolving power varies between 1.6(ISSR3) and 8.366(ISSR2) with an average
value of 5.2708. The PIC values and Resolving power were calculated for individual primers. The analysis indicated
that ISSR expressed maximum resolving power of 8.336 and RAPD gave maximum PIC values of 0.9925. RAPD
primer OPF-13 gave the maximum accessions coverage (depending on the value of PIC) in the rice genome. Out
of 52 amplified bands, 49 bands were polymorphic and 3 bands were monomorphic. The cluster analysis using the
marker systems could distinguish the different genotypes. The dendogram generated on the principle of Unweight
Pair Wise Method using Arithemetic Average (UPGMA) was constructed by Jaccard’s Coefficient and the genotypes
were grouped in to clusters. The dendogram developed for aroma and quality traits showed that the genotypes with
common phylogeny and geographical orientation tend to cluster together thus marker based molecular fingerprinting
could serve as a sound basis in the identification of genetically distant accessions as well as in the duplicate sorting
of the morphologically close accessions as the case is common in differentiating Basmati and non-basmati.