ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN INDIGENOUS RICE ACCESSIONS OF NORTHERN PAKISTAN USING BIOCHEMICAL MARKERS

Indigenous rice germplasm was evaluated for total seed storage proteins diversity using 116 accessions. We obtained 18 visible polypeptide bands out of which eight were polymorphic (44.4%) and ten bands were found monomorphic (55.6%). Entire banding profile was divided into three groups (I, II and III) based on their molecular weight. Each of three groups had six bands. Glutelin and Prolamin fragments had high polymorphism percentage, while Albumin and Globulin subunits had low polymorphism percentage. Based upon the study using UPGMA all 116 accessions were categorized into seven clusters in which accession 7202 and 7205 were present in cluster II showing marked dissimilarity with other accessions. Cluster III had 74 accessions which showed that on the basis of storage protein profile low genetic diversity was present in these rice accessions.