Assessment of genetic diversity among varieties of mulberry using RAPD and ISSR fingerprinting

Mulberry has an important role both in sericulture and in the manufacture of food products and beverages. The knowledge and information on genetic relationships, their identity is essential for conservation of plants, proper utilization and in plant breeding. Morus alba, known as white mulberry, is widely cultivated to feed the silkworms employed in commercial production of silk. The present study was undertaken to estimate the genetic variations and relationships between fourteen M. alba and two Morus lhou (ser) koidz cultivars in order to improve the yield and fruit quality of mulberries using the RAPD and ISSR markers with a set of 40 RAPD primers and 10 ISSR primers. Polymorphism exhibited by RAPD, ISSR and RAPD + ISSR primers among the sixteen samples were 66.67%, 55.05% and 64.11% respectively. To unriddle the genetic relationship between mulberry varieties, genetic dissimilarity coefficients were estimated for each pair of accessions. The dissimilarity coefficients ranged between 0.123–0.378 and 0.095–0.285 for RAPD and ISSR markers respectively. Dendrogram generated by UPGMA clustering method clustered the genotypes into three and four groups by RAPD and ISSR fingerprinting respectively. The Enchalang and Guksang16ho were found to be closely related. To analyze the faithfulness of dendrogram generated, cophenetic correlation coefficient was also calculated and it was found to be significant. The primers OPA-6, OPA-14, OPY-15, UBC-14 and UBC-17 gave higher average polymorphic index value. The results obtained from this study can also be used for germplasm characterization and better plant breeding.

► Genetic diversity of the sixteen Korean Morus alba genotypes were identified.
► We utilized RAPD and ISSR, markers for the analysis.
► High percentage of polymorphisms was detected among the cultivars.
► The result of the present study finds application in plant breeding and conservation of cultivars.
► The polymorphic index and multiplex ratio suggests the selection of primer and marker for the future studies on mulberry.