Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) marker was used to assess diversity in germplasm collection of Mucuna species which has gained tremendous attention in the recent past due to its promising nutritional, agronomic and medicinal attributes. Twenty five accessions comprising five species, collected from seven states of India were evaluated with twelve AFLP primer combinations that generated a total of 1,612 fragments with an average of 134 fragments per primer combination. The values of polymorphic information content (PIC), marker index (MI) and the resolving power (Rp) demonstrated the utility of the primer combinations used in the present study for discriminating the Mucuna accessions. UPGMA and Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) of the genotypic data revealed clustering of accessions as per phenetic and genetic relationships. The Jaccard's similarity coefficient values suggested good variability among the M. pruriens accessions indicating their utility in breeding programs. Molecular diversity presented in this study combined with the datasets on other morphological/agronomic traits will be highly useful for selecting appropriate accessions for plant improvement through conventional as well as molecular breeding approaches and for evolving suitable conservation strategies.
Mucuna Adans. is a large genus with more than 150 species of annual and perennial legumes of pantropical distribution. Despite considerable economic importance of some of its species, almost no work has been done on their cytogenetic characterization in any part of World. In this paper, we have presented a fi rst report on karyomorphological analysis in four Indian species viz., Mucuna atropurpurea, Mucuna monosperma, Mucuna nigricans and Mucuna pruriens bringing out diploid number for M. atropurpurea and karyotypic formula for all the four species. Root tips were treated with 0.002 M 8-hydroxyquinoline and temporary preparations were made after squash in aceto-carmine. Karyomorphological description for each of the species has been detailed taking into account the following features: chromosome number, total length and relative length, arm ratio of each chromosome, haploid set length and degree of asymmetry. Mitotic metaphases in all the species showed 2n=22 chromosomes. Mucuna nigricans showed two pairs of sat-chromosomes. None of the species, however, revealed identical karyotypic formula indicating occurrence of rearrangements. The haploid set length of annual M. pruriens was found to be reduced in size when compared to perennial species pointing its evolution from the latter.
Mucuna pruriens (L.) DC is a tropical legume cover crop with promising nutritional and agronomic potentials. It is also a key source of 3,4 dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine (L-Dopa) – a precursor of dopamine used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. However, lack of well-characterized germplasm plus poor accessibility to genomic resources has hindered its breeding programs. Furthermore, the cause and effect of various biotic and abiotic stresses impacting yield is also little studied. Systematic collection and evaluation of Indian germplasm by our group revealed presence of a diverse gene pool in India that can support a variety of breeding needs. The stability of L-Dopa trait across environments examined through Genotype and environment (G × E) interaction studies, as well as feasibility check on barcoding and phylogenetic analyses based on karyotype and conserved nuclear and chloroplast genes showed promising outcome. Germplasm screening for select biotic abiotic stresses identified resilient genotypes. Advances in use of DNA markers for diversity analysis, linkage map development, tagging of genes/quantitative trait loci for qualitative and quantitative traits, and progress in genomics are presented.
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