Wheat is known as the ‘King of cereals’ because of its cultivated high acreage, tremendous productivity and the prominent place it holds in the international food grain market. Genetic diversity is crucial for enhancing wheat attributes and devising suitable strategies for the best possible protection of germplasm thus, to create new potential species. A study was undertaken to assess the genetic diversity of 22 wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes, using 13 phenotypic traits and eight simple sequence repeats (SSRs) at Acharya Narendra Dev University of Agriculture and Technology, Ayodhya (U.P.) during Rabi 2019-20. The polymorphic primers, which have a high PIC value, also found a higher average PIC of 0.73 per locus. For all the genotypes under analysis, the total number of alleles was reported for each microsatellite marker by giving the number of amplified alleles as 1, 2, 3 and so on. UPGMA Cluster analysis based on microsatellite allelic diversity discriminated the varieties into seven different clusters. The results of the PCOA also showed better resolution for the genetic diversity than cluster analysis. Diversity analysis through SSR markers revealed WMC 398 and WMC 335 markers giving the most diverse values; hence is a great technique to detect variation among and within genotypes and to further use them in various molecular breeding programs for wheat improvement. However, more primers should be used for saturation of different regions in further studies. In light of this, if such attempts result in the loss of diversity, the development of plants with greater uniformity may ensure the production of enough food for the growing population of the globe.
Singh et al. (Fri,) studied this question.