Molecular Characterization of Sugarcane Genotypes using SSR Markers

One of the most important industrial crops in the world is sugarcane. Genotype identification of sugarcane at a molecular level to eliminate qualm that are often associated with phenotypic descriptions. In this study, three varieties of Sirugamani genotypes (TNAU Sugarcane Si. 6, TNAU Sugarcane Si. 7, TNAU Sugarcane Si. 8) and Coimbatore genotypes (Co 86032, Co 99004, Co 99006, Co 94008, Co 94012, Co 2001-13 and Co 2001-15) were characterized with set of five SSR primers with high polymorphism information content. Among the five SSR primers, one primer (UGSM36) was found to be dimorphic and remaining four were polymorphic. The Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) value ranged from 0.36 to 0.79. The Cluster analysis clustered genotypes into three distinctive clusters with similarity coefficient ranged from 50% to 83%. The primer UGSM49 clearly divided the genotypes location wise. Sirugamani genotypes could be separated from Coimbatore cultivars by using this primer and it was unique primer for varietal identification. It was concluded that, SSR markers can help to identification and characterization of sugarcane genotypes.