Tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius A. Gray) is one of the useful plant genetic resources possessing novel genes for abiotic and biotic stress tolerance. It is largely used in the breeding of common bean or related tropical legumes. The objective of this study was to determine the genetic interrelationship present among 20 diverse tepary bean genotypes using 10 selected and polymorphic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers and to identify genetically unique parental lines for developing breeding populations. The SSR markers amplified a total of 57 putative alleles with a size range of 102 to 304 base pairs. Number of alleles ranged from 2 to 16 with a mean of 5.7 per locus. Number of effective alleles ranged from 1.5 to 11.6 with a mean of 4.32. The mean observed and expected heterozygosity were 0.45 and 0.51, respectively, reflecting moderate level of genetic interrelationship among the tested genotypes. The mean polymorphic information content (PIC) of the SSR loci was 0.50 suggesting that the selected markers had high discriminatory power for genetic diversity analysis of tepary bean. Genetic distances varied from 0.18 to 0.64 with a mean value of 0.42, signifying relatively low levels of genetic diversity among the studied genotypes. Cluster analysis grouped the genotypes into three distinct genetic groups. Unique genotypes such as G40201, G40237, G40158, G40157 and G40158 from Cluster I, G40084 and G40033 from Cluster III were selected. These are distantly related parents and recommended for further breeding or genetic recombination to broaden the genetic basis of tepary bean or related legumes.
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