Pair-wise combinations of RAPD primers for diversity analysis with reference to protein and single primer RAPD in soybean

Both RAPD and protein markers were to estimate genetic diversity present in eight varieties of soybean. Of the nineteen random primers used fourteen produced 83 bands 62 being polymorphic generating polymorphism of 74.69% level. Similar level of (72.58%) polymorphism was generated by 12 pair-wise combinations of primers. Five of the paired combinations did not generate banding patterns. Two of the paired combination (OPC-5 + OPC-15) and (OPC-5 + OPC-17) produced unique banding patterns for all the eight varieties. The bands generated by paired combinations of primers were common to one of the primers in 21% cases however 79% of them were found novel and can be used to reveal additional polymorphism. The polymorphism generated by SDS-PAGE remained very less compared to RAPD analysis. The estimation of pairwise similarity coefficient using Jaccard's similarity index based on RAPD revealed approximately 70% similarity among the genotype studied that is diversity being 30% only. Average similarity shown by SDS-PAGE was much higher (81%) than RAPD based similarity estimates. The clustering based on UPGMA analysis of RAPD profiling separated all the varieties whereas SDS-PAGE grouped three varieties together at 100% similarity. Thus, it was concluded that the material though comes from diverse sources but had narrow genetic base.