Genetic Diversity of Asian Sea Bass, Lates calcarifer (Bloch) Populations in India Revealed by Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA

The genetic diversity of five feral populations of Asian Sea bass, Lates calcarifer collected from five isolated locations in India viz., Paradeep, Chilka lake, Kakinada, Chennai and Mumbai was studied using randomly amplified polymorphic DNA. Out of 20 primers screened, 5 decamer random primers amplified a total of 373 DNA bands of which 137 bands were polymorphic. The Kakinada population showed the highest polymorphism (65.71 %) whereas the Chennai population showed the lowest (48.28 %). The inter-population genetic similarity (GS) values estimated for the five populations were checked by one-way ANOVA and found to be significantly different at P < 0.01. The highest inter-population GS was found between Paradeep and Chilka (0.909) and lowest was between Kakinada and Chennai (0.800). Genetic distance tree developed by Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean cluster analysis depicted that the Sea Bass of Paradeep, Chilka and Kakinada belong to one cluster while Chennai and Mumbai populations make different cluster. Overall, Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA technique could be used for genetic differentiation of diverse populations of Sea bass to provide information on their population genetic structure. © 2013, The National Academy of Sciences, India.