Studies of Genetic Diversity in the Natural Population of Cassia Fistula L. using RAPD and ISSR Markers

Abstract

Cassia fistula L., family Fabaceae, is an important ornamental as well as medicinal plant. Morphologically populations show a great deal of variations. Therefore, the present study was conducted to study the genetic diversity among 12 accessions of Cassia fistula selected from population growing at Thapar University campus. Plants were selected on the basis of variation in flowering and morphological characters. PCR based molecular markers (RAPD and ISSR) were used to study the genetic diversity. Total 40 primers were screened of both the RAPD and ISSR markers out of which 11 primers (6 of RAPD and 5 of ISSR) were used for the analysis. According to the combined results of both the markers, total 40 marker bands were scored, out of which 27 were found to be polymorphic. According to this, high genetic diversity was recorded between the plants with distinct morphological and flowering characters. Individually ISSR revealed higher diversity (76%) than RAPD markers (67%). Thus in case of Cassia fistula ISSR were more useful markers than RAPD. Cassia fistula sample 12 (CF12) was found to be distantly related with all the other plant samples. The high level of diversity observed may be due to the mutations or changes occurred in the plant as a phenomena of adaptation to new location. It was noteworthy that genetic makeup of the plants plays an important role in deciding phenotypic traits such as flowering patterns and morphology of the plants. This study is a step to document the genetic diversity of this important medicinal plant.