MOLECULAR DIVERSITY STUDY OF DIFFERENT HYBRID VARIETIES OF BOTTLE GOURD (Lagenaria siceraria Mol.)

Abstract

Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria Mol.) is one of the most important Cucurbitaceous vegetables in the world. It is widely grown for leafy and green fleshy vegetables. This study was conducted to determine the molecular diversity among eight bottle gourd hybrid varieties which were collected from three renowned private Seed Companies (Metal Agro Limited, ACI Limited, Lal Teer Seed Limited) of Bangladesh. A total of nine primers (RAPD, ISSR and SSR) were used to determine polymorphism among bottle gourd hybrids to produce scorable DNA bands. Total 26 bands were amplified by nine primers. Among them 18 were polymorphic bands. The range of DNA amplification varied from 1000-100 bp. Average 64.82% polymorphism was obtained among the genotypes. Genetic diversity ranged from 0.2188 to 0.5000 and the frequency of major allele ranged from 0.5000 to 0.8750. Nei’s genetic distance ranged from 0.2308 to 0.7308. The PIC value ranged from 0.1948 to 0.3750 with an average value 0.3243. The PIC value indicates that the studied bottle gourd hybrids had medium level of molecular diversity. A dendrogram indicating the relative genetic similarity of the bottle gourd hybrids was constructed which followed three major clusters (A, B and C) among the studied material. The two hybrid H7 and H8 showed more similarity in genetic identity that fall in the same group-B which has collected from same seed company. Likewise, the hybrid H5 and H6 classified in the same group-C were also obtained from same seed company. Group-A contains the two hybrids H3 and H4 which are collected from Lal Teer Seed Ltd. The present investigation revealed that, the bottle gourd hybrid developed by the seed companies has more similarity within their own genotypes but to some extend genet ically diverse between different seed companies. These experimental findings can be used for the protection of hybrids in commercial purpose and in managing bottle gourd genetic resource in Bangladesh.