Tropical Plant Research

Shashank Mahesh, Vivek Vaishnav*, Pramod Kumar, Naseer Mohammad and S. A. Ansari

Abstract:
National Teak Germplasm Bank, Chandrapur (Maharashtra) holds one of the largest collections of teak plus tree ramets collected in the form of bud grafts from 12 natural teak populations of India. These grafts were planted with three ramets of each tree. The objective of the present investigation was to validate 118 ramets of 48 plus trees and also to characterize the germplasm bank using microsatellite markers. 12 microsatellite primers amplified 27 loci with estimates of expected and observed heterozygosity (0.33 and 0.2). Moderate values of resolving power (1.05) and polymorphic information content (0.27) confirmed its stringency for analysis. The genetic structure of the germplasm was determined through the FST (0.075), Shannon’s information index (0.59), Nei’s heterozygosity (0.41) and Chi-square tests to confirm its HWE state. 7.54% variation existed among populations and 92.46% within populations. Ramets were validated through UPGMA dendrograph. Majority of the plus trees grouped as per their sampling location. 35 ramets belonging to 14 plus trees (APT-22, MHSC-A1, MHSC-A2, MHSC-A3, ORPUB-6, UP-M, UP-A, AI-K, MHALP-8, ST-26, ST-35, ORANP-3, ORPUB-23 and ORPUB-0) clustered strictly as per their parental origin (ortet). For eight plus trees (APKEA-23, APKEA-24, APKEN-1, APNLP-1, MHSC-J1, MYHV, ORPB-12 and ORPUB-10) with three ramets, two ramets grouped with each other; whereas the third ramet could not be validated.