Characterization of Diverse Sesame (sesamum Indicum L.) Panel Through Morphological and Molecular Marker Analysis

Sesame is one of the most important and ancient oilseeds crop with high and good quality oils content. Present Investigation was carried out for the assessment of the genetic diversity using 33 sesame genotypes through morphologically and 21 SSR markers. In the morphological diversity analysis, nine clusters were observed with 33 genotypes using all phenological, yield and its contributing attributes. Among the 9 clusters, cluster II had maximum number of genotypes (14) followed by cluster III (6), cluster IV (5), cluster I (3), cluster V, VI, VII, VIII and IX had one genotype to each cluster. The highest inter-cluster distance was observed between cluster VI and I (386.70), which indicates maximum diversity between the genotypes of these clusters, could be further used in crossing programme. However, SSR markers grouped 33 genotypes into six clusters at 0.51 dissimilarity index. In which cluster V had maximum (7) genotypes and cluster VI had minimum (3) genotypes. The results of genetic diversity tallied with the morphological diversity, such as BRT-04 are the farthest from BRT-08, BRT-09 and BRT-10, however BRT-08, BRT-09 and BRT-10 are in the same cluster in both morphological and molecular diversity analysis. The UPGMA dendrogramwas constructed using Jaccard's dissimilarity coefficients based on SSR markers score on thirty-three genotypes. Polymorphism information content (PIC) value varied between 0.15 and 0.36 with an average of 0.27. The genotypes from the distinct clusters can be utilized for hybridization programme to recover heterotic pools.