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Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) is one of the ancient oilseed crop and its oil is highly priced because
of its natural antioxidants. Genus Sesamum belongs to family Pedaliaceae, which consists of 20 odd
species distributed in inaccessible parts of the world especially in Africa. The only cultivated species
Sesamum indicum has large number of varieties. Genetic divergence of S. indicum L. and its wild
relatives is poorly understood and even the basic chromosome number in many species is still not
known. The present study deals with the use of PCR based DNA markers viz., RAPD decamer
primers to assess the genetic diversity of the taxa. Out of the twenty eight primers initially screened,
only sixteen primers generated polymorphism among all the species. A total of 370 amplified DNA
fragments were recorded and among them 364 DNA fragments were polymorphic with an average of
22.13 bands per primer. The average genetic polymorphism recorded among the species was
98.61%. Polymorphic bands were scored and analyzed using statistical software NTSYS-pc version
2.1 and dendrogram was constructed based on UPGMA for cluster analysis of cultivated taxon and
its proposed progenitor along with other wild species.
Keywords: Sesamum indicum, RAPD,Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic mean, Progenitor, Genetic diversity