Molecular characterization of oats (Avena sativa L.) germplasm with microsatellite markers

Assessment of genetic diversity between selected genotypes serves as an essential tool to exploit the genetic variability. In the present study, Ninety nine accessions of oat acquired from different geographical regions were used to study the molecular genetic variability by the use of 91 microsatellite primers. A total of 248 alleles from 91 primer pairs in the 99 oat genotypes were detected. The average alleles per primer pair were recorded as 2.69. The primer pairs having the highest PIC values viz., AM 6 (0.50), AM 55 (0.49) and M 83381 (0.49) can be further used in the association mapping studies. Clustering of the oat genotypes into two main clusters A and B was done by using the symmetric matrix of DICE coefficient based on UPGMA method in Software – DARwin 6.0. In this study, the moderate amount of dissimilarity was observed between the whole set of accessions, the values ranging from 0.33 to 0.79. The individuals belonging to the different clusters may be useful in hybridization studies of oat improvement programmes.