Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the oldest domesticated crop species in the world and is widely recognized as an ideal model plant for the study of grass genetics and genome organization. Rice improvement depends on the conserved use of genetic variability and diversity in plant breeding programmes. Phenotypic variability and genetic diversity was studied in 13 non basmati rice samples collected from Jammu and Kashmir. The length of the seeds varied from 0.5 to 0.8 cm and the seed width varied from 0.1 to 0.3 cm. The weight of the seed varied from 0.36 to 0.77 g. A total of 94 alleles were amplified in 13 rice samples using six simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The analysis and dendrogram construction was performed using the DARWin 5.0 software. The genetic dissimilarity index calculated between samples ranged from 0.00 to 0.63. The generated dendrogram based on the dissimilarity matrix using the neighbor-joining approach of the unweighted pair group with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) method showed three distinct clusters.

Key words: Oryza sativa, diversity, characterization, molecular markers