Random amplified polymorphic dna and inter simple sequence repeat fingerprints for assessing genetic diversity of Indian garlic

96 garlic accessions assembled at Pune were evaluated using RAPD and ISSR markers to determine the genetic relationship among accessions exhibiting morphological variations. A total of 160 decamer RAPD and 100 ISSR primers were used, of these 20 RAPD and 14 ISSR primers showed good amplification and polymorphism. RAPD Primers generated total 189 bands out of which 65 were polymorphic, showing 34.39% polymorphism. OPM 09 exhibited the maximum polymorphism (63.63%) while OPE03 shown the least polymorphism (12.5%). A total of 123 ISSR bands were produced with 14 primers out of which 45 were polymorphic (36.58%), with average of 3.2 polymorphic bands per primer. Based on present studies, the molecular markers analyses detected extremely low genetic diversity in the present accessions. No relationship was observed between the patterns generated by the primers and the geographic origin of the clones. No specific association between morphologic diversity and genetic diversity due to lack of sexual reproduction. Possibly, the strong selection pressure for agronomic traits in many cases, did not affect molecular markers which are generally neutral, but contributed to phenotypic and genetic divergence. Sixteen genetically distinct types having favorable agronomic traits were identified from the 96 accessions.