Dhillon, SantoshAjay Kumar2016-09-102016-09-102013http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/76359Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br., commonly called pearl millet, is the fourth most important world food crop. It is well adapted to drought, low soil fertility, salinity, low pH and high temperatures among tropical cereals and is grown on >27 million hectares in arid and semiarid regions of Asia (10 million hectares) and Africa (17 million hectares). Pearl millet is a good source of calories, protein, fat and which provide sustenance to resource poor farmers and can grow in the poorest soil. The present study was undertaken to study iron ,zinc and microsatellite diversity among 30 pearl millet genotypes. The iron content in selected genotypes ranged from 22.65 mg/kg to 65.00 mg/kg and the zinc content varied from 21.90 mg/kg to 62.80 mg/kg (Table 4). ICTP- 8203 had highest iron content (65.00 mg/kg) while PPC-6 had lowest iron content (22.65 mg/kg). Highest zinc content (62.80 mg/kg) was observed in ICMV-221 and HHB-67 had lowest zinc content (11.90 mg/kg). Out of 30 primers analyzed, twenty-four primers showed amplification producing 77 bands, where 68 bands were polymorphic and 9 bands were monomorphic. Total number of bands ranged from 1 to 7 bands per primer with an average of 3.16. The size of amplified bands ranged from 100-700 bp. The similarity coefficients between different genotypes ranged from 0.51-0.88 with an average similarity value of 0.68. At an arbitrary cut-off at 62 per cent similarity level on a dendrogram, the pearl millet genotypes fall into one major cluster, the genotype HHB-234 was an outgrop. The major cluster was further divided into subclusters and subgroups. A unique allele of 350 bp was found into genotypes which had high Fe content.enGenetic diversity, Iron and zinc content, Molecular marker, Pearl millet, SSRThesis