Assessment of molecular diversity and establishing phenotypic relationships in female and male genotypes of spine gourd (Momordica dioica Roxb.)

Spine gourd (Momordica dioica Roxb.) is a highly nutritious vegetable crop with dioecious reproductive nature. Forty-eight spine gourd genotypes including 32 female and 16 male genotypes were assessed for molecular divergence to establish phenotypic relationships using ISSR markers. Twenty-two out of a total of 25 ISSR primers studied yielded a total of 88 bands of which 80 bands were polymorphic, with three of them being unique in their profile. Each primer thus produced a mean of 4.0 bands per marker, with 3.64 mean polymorphic bands per marker. Fifteen primers showed 100 percent polymorphism. In the dendrogram, genotypes were distinguished from each other with a similarity range of 0.465 to 0.959. A wider range of molecular diversity detected by ISSR markers reflected the presence of a high level of genetic variation forming different 5 broad groups of clusters. The clustering pattern based on molecular variation during this investigation revealed five clusters; of which cluster three had twenty-eight (all 16 malealong with 12 female genotypes) genotypes; while cluster 4 and 5 were mono-genotypic.