INTER- AND INTRA-SPECIFIC VARIATION AMONG FOUR IPOMOEA SPECIES AS DETECTED BY RAPD ANALYSIS
To understand the prospects of applying the RAPD technique to assay genetic diversity in Ipomoea, four species (I. batatas, I. trifida, I. triloba, and I. ×leucantha) were analyzed for RAPD molecular markers. Six accessions of each species were used. Significant RAPD polymorphisms were detected within each species. Of 20 primers used, nine produced clear scorable polymorphic bands. The number of polymorphic bands produced per primer ranged from two to nine. Pair-wide genetic distance was calculated based on “band sharing”. The SAS-CLUSTER procedure was used to build a hierarchical species dendrogram. The four species were clearly separated by the clustering, which agrees with their existing taxonomic relationship. This study shows that RAPD analysis can be a powerful tool for identifying duplicates of germplasm acessions and for assessing genetic diversity. The procedures are relatively inexpensive and easy to perform and could be valuable in preliminary assessment of field genebank collections to separate species and indicate duplications in collected material.