Boora, K.S.Lalit, Sahil2016-11-102016-11-102010http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/84790Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an annual grain legume and are rich source of proteins. It is a drought tolerant crop yet its production is greatly limited by abiotic stress such as drought at the terminal stage of maturity. Genetically diverse lines provide ample opportunity to create favourable genes combinations and the probability of producing a unique genotypes increases in proportion to the number of genes by which the parents differ. So the present investigation was carried out to assess the genetic diversity among drought tolerant and susceptible genotypes of chickpea using RAPD primers. Thus a total of 34 RAPD primers were used to assess molecular polymorphism among 18 drought tolerant genotypes and 11 drought susceptible genotypes of chickpea. A total of 195 sharp and reproducible bands were obtained out of which 190 were polymorphic and 5 were monomorphic. Average polymorphism across 29 genotypes was found to be 97.43 percent though percentage polymorphism ranged from 66.67% to 100%. For the genotypes tested, 1-11 bands were produced with a mean of 5.73 bands per primer. The size of bands ranged from 50-3000 bp. Polymorphic Information Content (PIC) value was also calculated and it ranged from 0.2529 to 0.9448 with primer OPI-12 and OPF-08 respectively, with mean PIC per primer (diversity index) of 0.711049. A total of thirteen primers amplified seventeen unique alleles in nine genotypes (GNG-663, HK-2, K-850, E100Ym, HC- 3, Dohad-Yellow, RSG-931, HC-5 and Pusa-244). Analysis of this polymorphism profile, generated using suitable statistical programmes, grouped the twenty-nine genotypes into two major clusters at a similarity coefficient of 0.62. The 3 drought tolerant genotypes (RSG-931, E100Ym and H-208) were outclustured from rest of the genotypes and were present in separate cluster. The rest of 26 genotypes comprising drought tolerant and susceptible genotypes were interspersed in the dendrogram and were present in second cluster. Second cluster at a similarity coefficient of 0.70 was divided into two subclusters. The coefficient of similarity across different genotypes ranged from 0.47 to 0.94 with a mean of 0.73 across all the genotypes. The most diverse genotypes were HC-1 and E100Ym with 53 percent divergence. It was followed by pair RSG-888 and E100Ym with dissimilarity of 52 percent. Fifty percent of dissimilarity was observed between genotypes RSG-931 and Pusa-244 and also between genotypes E100Ym and Dohad-Yellow. However, the maximum similarity of 94 percent was found between genotypes GNG-146 and L-551 and also between genotypes Phule-G-5 and HC-3. Thus the fingerprint of different varieties of chickpea is generated which can help in selection of better parents in breeding program.enGenotypes, Chickpeas, Dna, Genetics, Weather hazards, Rapd, Polymorphism, Tolerance, Crops, PlantingThesis