Abstract:
The understanding of the importance of dietary berries of maintaining human health has led to
unrestrained increase of global strawberry crop production. The present work was conducted for
molecular characterization and selection of genetically pure somaclonal variants of strawberry. For
molecular characterization, RAPD (Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA) markers namely instead OPK 01, OPK-02, and OPK-03, showed good technical resolution and sufficient variations among the
somaclonal variants. A total of 29 RAPD bands were scored, of which 27 (94.87%) by using these
arbitrary primers were obtained by polymorphic amplification products. OPK-01 produced the number of
polymorphic bands of 100-700 bp compared to OPK-02 and OPK-03. All the somaclonal variants
produced polymorphic bands with three RAPD markers suggesting that the somaclonal variants were
different from each other and genetic divergence were present among them. Thus, these markers could
be used for comparison of the genetic relationships, determination of patterns of genetic variation, and
measurement of genetic distance among the somaclonal variants of strawberry.
