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