African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 4 (10), pp. 1189-1194, October 2005          
ISSN 1684–5315 © 2005 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Assessing genetic diversity of some Anthurium andraeanum Hort. cut-flower cultivars using RAPD markers

Prakash Nowbuth¹, Govindranathsing Khittoo^1*, Theeshan Bahorun¹, Shadila Venkatasamy²

¹Department of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, University of Mauritius, Reduit, Mauritius.

²Faculty of Agriculture, University of Mauritius, Reduit, Mauritius.

*Corresponding Author’s E-Mail: gkhittoo@uom.ac.mu.

Accepted 21 June, 2005

Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers fingerprinting were used to assess the level of genetic variations among 24 cut-flower Anthurium andraeanum Hort. cultivars.  Eight decamer primers produced a total of 98 reproducible PCR bands that were used to calculate the Nei and Li’s genetic distance (GD_NL) coefficients amongst the cultivars.  GD_NL values ranged from 0.018 to 0.163 with an average of 0.09 (representing an average genetic similarity of 91.34%).  This significantly low average genetic distance among the various cultivars indicated that genetic variation among the cultivars was low.  A dendrogram, produced using unweighted pair group method using arithmetic averages (UPGMA), grouped the cultivars into four main clusters. Cultivar ‘Antartica’ was genetically distinct from all the others.  ‘Midori’ and ‘Bourgogne’ together formed a cluster whereas the remaining 21 cultivars grouped into two clusters and were closely related to each other. Clusters did not relate to cultivar provenance or origin and were independent of floral colour and spathe category.  Finding correlations between these morphological traits to RAPD markers would necessitate extensive primer screening.  Nevertheless, RAPD markers fingerprinting allowed a rapid assessment of the level of genetic variation that would otherwise be difficult to evaluate using the limited number of morphological markers present among these closely related anthurium cultivars.  

Key words: Anthurium andraeanum Hort., genetic variation, genetic distance, RAPD, fingerprinting, UPGMA, dendrogram, spathe.