GENETIC DIVERGENCE AMONG CURCUMA LONGA L. (TURMERIC) GERMPLASM FROM PAKISTAN USING RAPD MARKERS

Curcuma longa L. is a vegetatively-propagated crop which is known as spice crop and has valid medicinal importance due to many biological active compounds. Conventional breeding of turmeric is difficult and often limited to germplasm selection. Genetic divergence among turmeric (C. longa L.) genotypes collected from different ecological regions of Pakistan including Kasur, Changa manga, Faisalabad and Bannu was developed using Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. Fifteen decamer primers generated 125 RAPD fragments, of which 91 bands were polymorphic with 72.22 % polymorphism. The number of amplified bands ranged from 3 (OPT-23) to 11 (OPT-11) with the size of amplicons varied from 200 bp (OPT-09) to 2850 bp (OPT-05). Similarity coefficient across 25 genotypes of turmeric started from 0.00 to 0.76. Dendrogram was generated through UPGMA and clustered 25 genotypes into four groups. Cluster analysis differentiated Bannu genotype as a separate group while Kasur, Changa manga and Faisalabad genotypes were closely related to each other. RAPD analysis can be helpful to select the different parents for genetic breeding programmes in future and to increase the essential oil and curcumin contents of turmeric for the fulfillments of demands of pharmaceutical industries.