RAPD profile studies in Sorghum for identification of hybrids and their parents

Abstract

Most of the sorghum area under high yielding cultivars in India is planted with hybrids which provide a wide range of diversity for maturity and several morphological and grain quality traits. In view of the recently passed act “Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Act, 2001 it has become important to characterize the cultivars/ hybrids. However, not all types of markers are suitable and or feasible for identification and characterization of the hybrids. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) is one of the promising techniques for characterizing the cultivars/ hybrids because of its simplicity and rapidity. The present work aims at studying the suitability of RAPD markers for characterization of sorghum hybrids and their parents. Out of 15 decamer primers used for RAPD analysis, six primers yielded good and scorable amplified products for four sorghum hybrids namely CHS-14, CSH-9, CSH-19R and CSH-15R and their respective parental lines. According to presence and absence of bands the RAPD markers were classified into seven types of markers. The bands common in parents and hybrid included in marker type I, III and IV are good markers to confirm the hybrid of its respective parents. The bands from parents not found in hybrid and included in marker type II, V and VI are good markers to identify self and off type plants from hybrid. The non-parental bands expressed uniquely in hybrid and included in marker type VII has direct implication in identification of specific hybrid and can be useful in protecting the rights of plant breeders.