Microsatellite based DNA fingerprinting and assessment of genetic diversity in bougainvillea cultivars.

Novel microsatellite markers were developed to investigate the genetic diversity and DNA fingerprinting of bougainvillea cultivars. Total of 175 SSRs were designed from over 50,000 SSRs identified in the whole genome sequence data, 33 highly polymorphic markers were identified. These selected SSRs produced a total of 165 alleles with 2 (BOUG-3 and BOUG-50) to 9 (BOUG-69) alleles per loci with an average of 5 alleles per locus. The overall size of the amplified products ranged from 90 bp (BOUG-51 and BOUG-81) to 320 bp (BOUG-162). The gene diversity per locus ranged from 0.13 to 0.91 with a mean of 0.71. Primer BOUG-73 and BOUG-124 exhibited highest gene diversity with greater number of alleles. The mean Nei's genetic diversity index was 0.678 with range of 0.134 (BOUG-77) to 0.958 (BOUG-69). The UPGMA based dendrogram divided the cultivars into seven major clusters. Clustering pattern was more distinct for bract types and variegated cultivars which were also confirmed by PCA scatter plot diagram. The pair-wise genetic distance estimates ranged from 0.089 to 0.86 with an average of 0.56. Each of the 125 cultivar profiled had unique marker profile indicating that the SSR markers identified are useful for identification and differentiation of bougainvillea cultivars. These informative markers identified from the study will be of great utility to assess the genetic diversity, understanding the population structure and in marker assisted breeding for improvement of bougainvillea.