Analysis of genetic diversity among wild pomegranates in Western Himalayas, using PCR methods

The genus Punica (Punicaceae) is distributed in Iran, Afghanistan, India and Mediterranean countries. Iran is considered to be its primary center of origin. In India Punica granatum is found in wild only in Western Himalayan regions comprising, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand states. However, there is little information available about the genetic variation present in pomegranates in the regions. In this paper we describe the use of DAMD and RAPD methods that generate the profiles, to study genetic diversity in wild genotypes of the P. granatum in India. Forty-nine accessions representing two regions of Western Himalaya were analyzed. Similarity coefficient value varied from 0.08 to 0.79 across different accessions. The results indicate that DAMD (97.08%) revealed more polymorphism in comparison to RAPD (93.72%). The results show that these methods are sufficiently informative to unravel the genetic variations in wild pomegranates in Western Himalayas.