Abstract:
Finger millet (Eleusine coracana L.) commonly known as "Kurakkan" in Sri Lanka and has been
cultivated since ancient times as the second staple food after rice. Because of its high nutritional value,
excellent storage qualities and its ability to adapt to a wide range of adverse agro-ecological
conditions, it is worthy to have continuous efforts on improvement of the productivity and
conservation of crop genetic diversity. The germplasm identification and characterization is an
important link between the conservation and utilization of plant genetic resources. Molecular markers
have provided a powerful tool for breeders to identify the new sources of variation. 82 SSR (Simple
Sequence Repeats) markers have been published by Dida et al (2007) for finger millet and only 31 of
them are mapped. This study was conducted to compile an informative set of SSR markers out of
mapped 31 markers using 48 different finger millet germplansm accessions with different
geographical origins. Polymorphism, efficiency of amplifying the target loci and ease of scoring on
polyacrylamide gels were evaluated for the markers. Nine markers out of 31 were monomorphic
(UGEP06, UGEP08, UGEP26, UGEP52, UGEP56, UGEP76, UGEP104, UGEP107 and UGEP108).
UGEP 01 could not amplify the target loci far most of the samples and scoring of additional three
markers (UGEP53, UGEP60 and UGEP65) was difficult. Two markers (UGEP03 and UGEP21)
amplified duplicate loci were scored as two separate markers each. This resulted in a set of
20infarmative markers (UGEP03.1, UGEP03.2, UGEP05, UGEP10, UGEP11, UGEP12, UGEP15,
UGEP18, UGEP21.1, UGEP21.2, UGEP24, UGEP31, UGEP68, UGEP77, UGEP78 , UGEP81,
UGEP90, UGEP102, UGEP106 and UGEP110). Across the 48 accessions, the total number of alleles
amplified by the selected 20 markers was 69, ranging from 2 to 7 alleles per locus. The major allele
frequency ranged from 0.66 to. 0.98. The Polymorphic Information Contents (PIC) ranged from 0.04
to 0.60and heterozygosity ranged from 0.016 to. 0.044. The selected set of markers was successfully
used to assess the genetic diversity of 48 finger millet germplasm accessions of Sri Lanka. The
selected set of markers was successfully used to assess the genetic diversity of 113 finger millet
germplasm accessions of Sri Lanka and will be used to assess the remaining accessions available at
PGRC, Gannoruwa as future work.
