Knowledge of intraspecific genetic diversity of Moringa oleifera Lam. is crucial in developing improved cultivars. This study examined the genetic diversity, clustering pattern, and breeding implications of 40 accessions of M. oleifera using Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) primer pairs, E-ACC/M-CAC, and E-ACA/M-CAG. The two primer pairs generated 1272 fragments, of which 1252 were polymorphic (97.7 %) with a mean polymorphic information content (PIC) of 0.97. Overall, 80 alleles were detected with a mean major allele frequency of 0.025. Gene diversity (GD) values were relatively high, with a mean of 0.98, while the Shannon diversity ranged from 0.36 to 0.41 with a mean of 0.39 ± 0.02. The estimate of gene flow (Nm) was quite high, with a mean of 9.71 except in accession beN081, which had a low value of 0.38. The coefficient of gene differentiation (Gst) value of 0.05 indicated that 5 % of the total genetic divergence was among populations and 95 % within the populations. The cluster pattern showed a similarity coefficient range of 0.87 to 0.96 and grouped the 40 accessions into distinct clusters with an overall similarity of 90 %. The study identified potential parent accessions that can be exploited for commercial cultivation, conservation, and breeding purposes of M. oleifera in Nigeria.
Volume 12 | 08-Special Issue
Pages: 659-670
DOI: 10.5373/JARDCS/V12SP8/20202568