Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

TESTING GENETIC PURITY IN PIGEONPEA WITH SSR MARKERS

Babasaheb C. Walunjkar, L.D. Parmar, Nirbhay Kumar Singh, V. H. Kanbi and D.M. Thakor

Abstract

The development of hybrid varieties should be supported by the availability of high quality seeds. Genetic purity is one of the quality criteria required for successful seed production of pigeonpea hybrid. A total of 40 SSR primers were used for characterization of the 12 pigeonpea genotypes. From ten SSR primers which had shown polymorphism, four primers (ASSR23, ASSR317, ASSR366 and CCttc001) were selected to test the genetic purity of hybrids and they produced clear, scorable and unambiguous polymorphic bands among the parents. Grow-out test was conducted based on morphological traits using F1 plants. The hybrid GT 308A × GTR 42 recorded highest genetic purity (96.2%) followed by GT 311A × GTR 55 (94.6%), GT 301A × GTR 32 (93.1%) whereas GT 33A × GTR 8 recorded least genetic purity (93.0%) on the basis of morphological observations.