Abstract

Abdullah Krishnan, Robert Fernandes and Bernand Majid

Artemisia capillaris (Thunb.) commonly known as wormwood or sagebussh is under-exploited plant. Genetic variation between A. capillaris was evaluated using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR) markers. Among these markers, RAPD primers generated 291 amplification products of which 108 were polymorphic and ISSR markers produced 283 amplification products, out of which 54 were polymorphic. RAPD fingerprinting detected more polymorphic loci (95.60%) than the ISSR fingerprinting (66.67%). Similarity, index values ranged from 0.1579 to 0.8189 (RAPD), 0.5686 to 0.9016 (ISSR) and 0.3933 to 0.8468 (combined RAPD and ISSR) and mean similarity index value of 0.4739, 0.7457 and 0.6174 for RAPD, ISSR and combined (RAPD and ISSR) data, respectively. RAPD and ISSR marker systems were found to be useful for the genetic diversity studies in A. capillaris and to identify the variation.