Genetic Diversity of Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) Accessions using Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSRs) Marker

Abstract Background: Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) belongs to the family Leguminoseae. It is the world’s most important source of edible oil and vegetable protein. To our knowledge, little is known about the genetic variability of cultivated Ethiopian A. hypogaea at a molecular level. It is important to understand the genetic diversity of the crop to collect, conserve and use the germplasm for variety development. In the present study, ISSR markers were used to determine the genetic variability and diversity of 43 accessions of A. hypogaea collected from different regions of Ethiopia.Results: Four ISSR primers were used to generate 56 reproducible bands of which 29 (51.8%) were polymorphic. The band size ranges from 120 bp to 1100 bp. The number of amplified bands varied from 12 in primer UBC841 to 18 in primer UBC 881. The polymorphic bands percentage ranges from 27.8 % of Primer UBC 881 to 84.6 % of primer UBC 857. The polymorphic information content (PIC) value ranges from 0.29 to 0.76 with the average value 0.49. The mean Nei’s gene diversity and Shannon’s information index were 0.25 and 0.33, respectively. Genetic relationship between A. hypogaea accessions based on Jaccard’s pair wise similarity coefficients varies from 44% to 83% with an average value of 63.5%. The UPGMA dendrogram based on cluster analysis grouped A. hypogaea accessions into five distinct clusters at 63.5% similarity coefficient, and the principal coordinate analysis revealed similar grouping. Conclusions: Even though in both UPGMA and PCoA most of the accessions were grouped in separate clusters irrespective of their geographic origins, the ISSR marker-based analysis shows the presence of genetic variability among the accessions. Moreover, the current study demonstrated the potential informativeness of ISSR markers in estimating the extent of genetic variation in A. hypogaea accessions.