Diversity analysis of sweet potato (<i>Ipomoea batatas</i> [L.] Lam) germplasm from Burkina Faso using morphological and simple sequence repeats markers

Abstract

Collecting and characterizing plant material has been basic for crop  improvement, and diversity has long been seen as vital for rational management and use of crops. Thirty (30) morphological characters and thirty (30) simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were used to assess the diversity among 112 sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas [L.] Lam) cultivars in Burkina Faso and to develop a core collection. Eight morphological  characters were able to differentiate the 112 accessions and to identify 11
duplicates while 28 SSR markers were more informative in discriminating the accessions and to identify five duplicates. The diversity assessment using the two approaches revealed high diversity with a coefficient of 0.73 using the phenotypic data, while moderate diversity with a coefficient of 0.49 was obtained using the SSR markers. These results show no correlation between the two approaches (with dissimilarity index of 0.95). A core collection was constituted using the SSR based data while the eight
discriminative phenotypic descriptors will be used in the identification of cultivars.

Key words: Accessions, genetic diversity, germplasm, molecular markers, morphological characters, simple sequence repeat, sweet potato.