Morphological and Molecular Characterization of Indian Potato ( Solatium tuberosum L.) Cultivars

Potato ( Solanum tuberosum L.), fourth largest food crop in the world and is the major vegetable produced in India. New varieties with improved agronomic traits are released every year and characterizing these using both morphological and molecular techniques is not only vital for registration and univocal identification but also to quantify the diversity present within. To estimate the diversity present and to establish distantness among the 55 Indian potato cultivars, 50 morphological descriptors of distinctiveness, uniformity and stability (DUS) including 22 quantitative parameters were used along with 24 highly informative microsatellite or simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The cultivars were grouped into 5 and 3 different clusters based on morphological parameters and molecular analysis respectively. Varieties, Kufri Kashigaro and Kufri Anand recorded the highest diversity value of 1.95 based on morphology, whereas two indigenous cultivars Phulwa and Jeevan Jyoti which are used as parents in breeding programs showed the highest diversity using molecular markers. As expected, SSR markers showed detailed and in-depth diversity with 294 polymorphic alleles and PIC (polymorphism informative content) value ranging from 0.57 to 0.91. The heterozygosity expected varied from 0.57 to 0.92 with an average Rp (resolving power) value of 4.57. Considerable diversity was observed in the Indian potato cultivars and these distinct cultivars may be used as parents for breeding of potato for wider environments and changing climatic scenario. Moreover, the genotypic data would serve as reference for distinguishing different cultivars of potato.