Assessment of Genetic Diversity in Macrotyloma uniflorum - A Potential Pulse Crop of Future

Macrotyloma uniflorum (Lam.) Verdc., commonly known as Horse gram, is an important legume crop of India which is also cultivated as forage crop in some other semi arid regions of the world. A number of desirable traits such as tolerance to drought and heavy metal stress, growth in poor soils, high protein content, antioxidant activity, antimicrobial activity and various medicinal properties make it a crop of interest and potential food source of future. Although in India it is cultivated since prehistoric times, the production and area under cultivation is declining due to unsuitable plant types for intensive agriculture. To cope up with this situation introgression of desirable traits to well adapted genotypes from cultivated and wild species is required. Before embarking upon any improvement programme it is prerequisite to have information about the extent of genetic diversity in the germplasm for desirable traits. In Horse gram few studies on phenotypic and biochemical diversity were reported but no report on molecular diversity is available. Thus in present study genetic diversity of 49 genotypes of M. uniflorum and one each of related wild species M. axillare and M. gharwalensis was assessed using 25 random (RAPD and ISSR) and 76 newly designed sequence based (EST-SSR and ILP) markers. A considerable high polymorphism was detected in few genotypes which can prove to be promising lines for further genetic analyses. Overall the results of present work provided the estimates of genetic variability present in M. uniflorum germplasm countrywide which could be harnessed for various breeding and improvement programmes in this crop.