ANNOUNCEMENTS
Nymphaea L. (Family - Nymphaeaceae, Order - Nymphaeales) is a group of aquatic angiosperms which possess high ornamental and economic importance. Nymphaea L. owns a great evolutionary significance in exploration and comprehension of the origin and evolution of basal angiosperms. Due to unclear relationship among the members of family Nymphaeaceae, the taxonomic status for this group is still perplexing. Analyzing genetic diversity is of significant importance as this knowledge could further be utilized to infer about the origin of species, taxonomic status, demographic history and likelihood for diversity erosion. There is a paucity of such genetic diversity-related studies for Nymphaea L. DNA-based markers can overcome the challenge of environmental influence due to varied geographical distribution of members of Nymphaea L. Microsatellite markers being co-dominant can provide better information about the allelic variation which is crucial for genetic diversity analysis. The present study aims for analyzing the genetic diversity among different accessions of Nymphaea L. using the genotyping data generated using microsatellite or SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) markers for Nymphaea accessions collected from various sites in India. The fixation index value (F=-0.5) obtained using GenAlEx 6.5 software indicated high levels of genetic variability among Nymphaea accessions of Goa and Maharashtra. The higher average observed heterozygosity (0.544) compared to average expected heterozygosity (0.344) implies the occurrence of out-crossing. A Neighbor-joining (NJ) dendrogram constructed using DARwin 6.0 software showed low bootstrap values (≤50%) for most of the clusters pointing to the need for adding more marker data in order to get a more robust representation. Only few of the clusters were similar to that observed in the 3-D plot for the principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) performed using GenAlEx 6.5 software. The insights about the genetic diversity among various Nymphaea accessions could be utilized in improvement of germplasm conservation and breeding programmes.
Key words: Nymphaea L., genotyping, microsatellite markers, genetic diversity
