Genetic Diversity in Asia Physic Nuts as Evaluated by RAPD Markers

Abstract

 Physic nut or jatropha nut (Jatropha curcas L.) is a potential source of renewable energy as biodiesel and green fuel.   A major problem of this crop is the lack of improved varieties for commercial plantation.  To start a breeding project for physic nut, its genetic diversity should be studied to assess the genetic variation available for developing a new variety.  Genetic variation studies were among 34 accessions of physic nut germplasm, collected from china, India, Vietnam and Thailand, using 37 RAPD markers.  Eight markers showed polymorphism among the physic nut samples.  The number of bands per primer ranged from 1 to 4, with an average of 1.75 alleles.  A truncation of clustering at the Dice's similarity coefficient of 0.45 separated the genotypes into 2 groups.  The first group comprised the materials from china and vietnam, the second one comprised those from Thailand and India.  A high cophenetic correlation (r) of 0.92 confirmed a good clustering result.  These data can be used as a basic information for selection of parental plants for a jatropha nut breeding program.