Abstract

The advent of random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique has opened up new avenues and opportunities in the diversified field of research and scientific investigations by the application of molecular markers to study the taxonomic and genetic diversity. The genetic diversity of nine accessions of Ocimum sanctum (Krishna Tulsi) collected from different parts of state of Madhya Pradesh has been reported in this paper using eight random amplified polymorphic DNA primers. Total of 144 bands were scored corresponding to an average of 18 bands per primer, with 137 bands showing polymorphism (95.13%) and 7 bands showing monomorphism (4.86%). All the primers individually gave more than 60% polymorphism. Jaccard similarity coefficient ranged from 0.18 to 0.48. A dendrogram constructed based on the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) clustering method revealed two major clusters. Cluster-1 comprised of seven accessions, which was further differentiated into two subclusters and while Cluster-2 included only 2 accessions. This study revealed rich genetic diversity among O. sanctum accessions from Madhya Pradesh in central India, possibly allowing it to more easily adapt to environmental variations.

Key words: Polymerase chain reaction- random amplified polymorphic DNA (PCR-RAPD), genetic diversity, medicinal plant, primers, DNA extraction.