Development and charaterization of UGMS markers for genetic diversity analysis in Rhododendron arboreum

Abstract

Rhododendron arboreum is an ecologically important species growing in Himalayan regions. It is widely popular due to its medicinal potential, edible, sacred & economic value, however very little is known about its genetic diversity. The development and characterization of UGMS markers will provide a major impact on genetic diversity analysis. Total 792 (615 singletons and 177 contigs) unigenes were predicted from 1,241 publicly available EST database from NCBI (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) site in R.catawbiense by clustering of 2 - 33 random EST sequences. From 50 SSR contained Unigenes, 36 UGMS primers were designed for the cross amplification approach and six pairs of microsatellite primers were produced clear PCR amplification. The cross related species/genera transferability rate was 16.66% from R.catawbiense to R.arboreum. The polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.2756 to 0.9212 with an average of 0.5765.The average observed heterozygosity (Ho) was 0.8666 i.e. greater than average expected heterozygosity (He) was 0.6792. The genetic diversity was found with an average of 0.6222 within population of R.arboreum and genetic diversity found with an average of 0.3436 among the population.This study revealed the insight of abundance & distribution of microsatellite in the expressed region of the Rhododendron arboreum genome.