Cytogenetic Diversity Analysis of Coix Species Using ISSR Markers

A. S. Naik*¹ and S. D. Taware²

¹Department of Botany, S.B.E.S.College of Science, Aurangabad India. ²Genome Life Sciences, Labh Chambers, Station Road, Aurangabad India.   Corresponding Author E-mail: anjali.naik360@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The genus Coix, a wild relative of maize, belonging to tribe Maydeae of family Poaceae is represented by 3 species in India viz. C. aquatica, C. gigantea and C. lacryma-jobi. It is of wide occurrence in most of south-east Asian countries and of great economic importance as food, forage and medicinal plant. Even though the floras written on Grasses of India describe this genus to be comprised of 3 species, there is not only negligible morphological distinction among these, but at least 2 of them produce a range of semi fertile interspecific hybrids and all form various number of aneuploids. Some interspecific hybrids are suspected to have originated through apomixis. Formation of interspecific hybrids is rather contradictory to the very definition of a species Thus species delimitation poses a taxonomic problem for this genus. The single sequence repeats (SSR) micro satellites, present in nuclear and organelles DNA can be used as molecular markers and has wide ranging applications in the field of genetics including kinship and population studies. These Inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR) represent genome region between micro satellite loci. Sequences amplified by ISSR-PCR can be used for delimiting species.

KEYWORDS: Coix; Cytogenetic diversity; ISSR; phylogeny analysis

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