GENETIC DIVERSITY IN DRAGON FRUIT (HYLOCEREUS SP) GERMPLASMS REVEALED BY RAPD MARKER

Dragon fruit (Hylocereus sp) is considered an important economic fruit species worldwide due to its rich nutrient contents and strong tolerance to drought stress. In order to investigate genetic diversity in dragon fruits in Bangladesh, 15 germplasms were subjected to randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis. A total of 43 loci of which 37 (86.05%) were polymorphic amplified from the genomic DNA of germplasms using 5 decamer random primers. Overall gene diversity or heterozygosity and Shannon's information index detected were 0.327 and 0.482, respectively indicating that a substantial level of genetic diversity existed in the studied germplasms. Pair wise band-sharing based similarity indices (ranged from 0.41 to 0.97), Jaccard similarity coefficient (ranged from 0.21 to 0.94) and Nei's genetic distance (ranged from 0.05 to 1.12) indicated that a wide range of genetic variation and relatedness retained between dragon fruit germplasms. The dendrogram constructed on the basis of Jaccard similarity coefficient showed that 15 dragon fruit germplasms grouped into different clusters and that individuals within one cluster possessed similar morphological traits, though there were some discrepancies. RAPD analysis effectively disclosed genetic variation and relatedness between dragon fruit germplasms.