Kumar, HarshSingh, Chandra Prakash2017-11-302017-11-302015http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810036640The present investigation was carried out to characterize 17 elite genotypes of sweet potato(Ipomoea batatasL.) using morphological features and molecular markers. Genotypes were evaluated for eleven traitsnamelynumber of branch, vine length, number of leaves/plant, leaf area, leaf area index, length of tuber, girth of tuber, neck length, average weight/tuber, yield/hectare and skin and flesh colour.The mean square due to genotypes was found significant for all the characters. The mean performance of genotypes has been compared with the check Shree Bhadra for each character as it is one of the commonly cultivated genotypes of Bihar.The observations were also recorded based on descriptors coding in the Descriptors of Sweet Potato (Human, 1991) for grouping of the seventeen genotypes of sweet potato under study on the basis of their similarity and differences with respect to vine length, neck length, flesh colour and skin colour. The exploitable extent of genetic variability amongst the entries was present as revealed by considerably higher estimates of GCV, PCV, h2 and GA as percentage of mean. For GCV the highest value was recorded for leaf area index (51.57) and the lowest for girth of tuber (20.56). For PCV the highest value was recorded for leaf area index (53.76) and the lowest for girth of tuber (21.79). For heritability the highest value was recorded for leaf area (97.19) and the lowest for length of tuber (78.50). For GA as percentage of mean the highest value was recorded for leaf area index (97.56) and the lowest for length of tuber (36.21). Sixteen sweet potato microsatellite markers (SSR)were used for molecular characterization, which werecapable of detecting 276 alleles with an average of 17.25 alleles per locus. The highest number of alleles per locus was observed for Ib3/31 SSR primer. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 14 to 28 and allelic polymorphism information content (PIC) value ranged from 0.79 for the primer Ib-242 to 0.92 for Ib2/55 with an average of 0.88.A perusal of similarity coefficients clearly reflected that a very high degree of similarity exists between sweet potato genotypesDOP-MIX-93-13 and RS-5 (0.29), on the other hand, the two most distantly related genotypes were DOP-MIX-97-6 and 85-X-04 (0.02).The result of the present study clearly established that the utilization of sixteen selected SSR markers was sufficient for discrimination and unambiguous identification of all the seventeen sweet potato genotypes used.ennullThesis