Evaluation of
Allelic Variation in Cedrus deodara (Roxb.) G. Don to identify Region Specific Nuclear
Microsatellite Markers (nSSRs) in Uttarakhand, India
Kumar Akhilesh, Barthwal Santan and Ginwal H.S.
Res. J. Biotech.; Vol. 17(1); 46-51;
doi: https://doi.org/10.25303/1701rjbt4651; (2022)
Abstract
Cedrus deodara is an excellent timber species extensively prone to illicit felling
and smuggling of timber. Knowledge of molecular marker techniques can help in tracing
the origin of the stolen timber back to the forest area for legal purposes. The
present study demonstrates the use of nSSR markers for timber tracking in Cedrus
deodara. In this research twentyfive individual trees were randomly selected from
two geographically distinct populations Kathiyan and Jageshwar forest of Uttarakhand.
Out of 47 nuclear SSR primers, only nine showed positive amplification out of which
five (pdms009, pm01, pm05, SSRPtctg4698 and RPTest9) were finally selected to reveal
allelic variation. Total of 10 alleles of individuals were detected at all five
loci for both populations. For Kathiyan, population effective number of alleles
ranged from 1.26 to 2 while for Jageshwar, it ranged from 1.14 to 1.98. Expected
heterozygosity (HE) for Chakrata population ranged from 0.21 to 0.51 while for Jageshwar
it was between 0.13 to 0.5.
Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) shows that most of the variations were found
within a population (97.81 %) as compared to among the population (2.19 %) with
an FST value of 0.02. In this research, we found that the same primer pairs gave
a different product length for both geographically distinct populations of C. deodara,
for Kathiyan population locus pdms009, pm01, pm05, SSRPtctg4698 and RPTest9 product
lengths for both alleles a and b were 197 and 125, 304 and 221,402 and 317,261 and
208, 332 and 246 base pair respectively, while for Jageshwar population, it were
339 and 238, 319 and 203, 456 and 283, 245 and 197, 309 and 235 base pair respectively.
