Genetic diversity revealed by morphological traits and ISSR markers in 48 Okras (Abelmoschus escullentus L.)

Okra is a widely distributed crop in the tropics, subtropics, and warmer areas of the temperate zones. Its major potential uses as a vegetable, oil and protein source, and source of paper pulp and fuel, or biomass are compatible. It is expected to have high value of exploitation and application. Due to the limited number of molecular studies focused on okras, the methods of morphological and ISSR markers were used to analysis the genetic diversity of 48 okras in the present study. The 22 primers were picked for ISSR-PCR, and a total of 154 fragments were amplified with an overall average polymorphism of 54.55 %. We used the 154 markers to construct the dendrogram based on the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic means (UPGMA). A high level of genetic diversity was found among 48 individuals. The 48 Okras was divided into four clusters at Dice's coefficient of 0.19 with clustering analysis. Based on these data of the genetic diversity, it will be possible to exploit the available resources of okra in more valuable ways.