Development and molecular characterization of interspecific hybrids of Jatropha curcas x J. integerrima

Reciprocal crosses between J. curcas and J. integerrima were attempted. The interspecific hybrids were successful only when the former was used as seed parent. The F(1) hybrids exhibited a wide range of variation for vegetative and reproductive traits suggesting considerable heterogeneity between the parental plants. Some of the characters such as stem type, branching habit, leaf size and shape of the hybrids resembled the female parent while others like leaf pigmentation, fruit and seed size, flower colour, resembled the male parent. The parents and their 23 hybrid plants were subjected to random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis using 61 random decamer primers. Out of 61 primers, the amplification was obtained in 51 primers producing 384 bands. The similarity value between the parents (41.4%) was less than those between parents and hybrids. Cluster analysis based on Jaccard's similarity coefficient outgrouped the female parent from rest of the genotypes at a similarity coefficient of 0.55. The 2-Dimensional and 3-Dimensional scaling by principal component analysis (PCA) grouped some hybrids with male parent, some with female parent while others in between both the parents.