Correlation and functional differentiation between different markers to study the genetic diversity analysis in medicinally important plant Plumbago zeylanica

The plant species Plumbago zeylanica (P. zeylanica) is a multipurpose medicinal herb of family Plumbaginaceae. This plant is a natural gift to mankind credited with potential medicinal properties such as anti-cancer, anti-atherogenic, cardiotonic, hepatoprotective, anti-fungal, diabetes and neuroprotective assets to list of few. In this study, genetic diversity and relationships among various Plumbago accessions, collected from different geographical regions of India, was assessed using simple sequence repeat (SSR), sequence related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) markers. SSR and SRAP markers showed highest values of Nei's genetic diversity and Shannon information index among populations. We also observed statistically significant genetic differentiations among and within populations (P < 0.01 in the AMOVA tests). Additionally, both Un-weighted paired group method with arithmetic average (UPGMA) and principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) grouped P. zeylanica populations into similar clusters which corroborate the above analysis to be useful for genetic diversity analysis of this plant. Our data signifies that SSR and SRAP are both reliable and effective tools for analyzing genetic diversity in P. zeylanica. However, based on our chosen dataset, we find ITS marker less significant for the genetic diversity analysis of this multifaceted plant. This information would be useful towards the identification, characterization and conservation of this species at the molecular level.