Out of the 19 pairs of SSR primers, only 6 pairs produced polymorphic bands and therefore, these 6 pairs were selected for use in the analysis of the genetic diversity of jute. The polymorphism was seen by SSR efficiently distinguishing all genotypes of jute. A total of 37 alleles were identified among the 63 jute genotypes with an average of 6.17 alleles per locus (Table 2), which was higher than that reported (4.61) by Akter et al. (2008) involving 23 SSR primers with 10 jute cultivars, but very close (6.33) to the finding of Huq et al. (2009) using 27 SSR primers with 16 jute genotypes of C. olitorius and C. capsularis. Differences in the average number of alleles per locus may arise from using different combinationsof genotypes and different loci in the present study.
The PIC value, a reflection of allelic diversity and frequency among the jute genotypes analyzed, ranged from 0.34 to 0.51, with an average of 0.41. The highest PIC value (0.51) was observed in the MJM136 locus, indicating that this was the most informative primer in this study