ISSR analysis reveals low genetic diversity and high genetic differentiation in Kaempferia galanga L. in South India populations

Kaempferia galanga is an important medicinal herb used in many ayurvedic drug preparations. We investigated the genetic diversity and structure of 4 populations of K galanga collected from South India using inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. A low level genetic diversity was noticed among the populations (PPB = 44.45%; h = 0.1517 and I = 0.2309). Average diversity within population was also low (PPB = 23.29%; h = 0.1003; I = 0.1439) and the highest genetic diversity was observed in Shimoga population (PPB = 27.27%; h = 0.112; I = 0.1625). Nei's differentiation coefficients (G(ST)) was found to be high (0.3942) and the gene flow (Nm) was low (0.7683), confirming the high population genetic differentiation. The unweighted pair-group method using arithmetic average (UPGMA) clustering demonstrated similar results. Based on the overall low genetic diversity and high genetic differentiation among K galanga populations in South India, a conservation strategy is proposed.