Abstract:
Centella asiatica is a small trailing perennial herb and is the only species
of Centella seen in India. Stem is green to greenish red colour and rooting at nodes.
These connects plants each other. Petiole is long, smooth, green in colour. Leaves
are palmately veined fleshy leaves. Plants are mainly found in marshy land of
tropical and subtropical regions.
Genetic diversity is that the total variety of genetic characteristics within the genetic
makeup of a species. It plays a very important role within the survival and flexibility
of a species and is important for a species to evolve.
We aim to develop and use transcriptome based SSR molecular marker for analysis
of genetic diversity in Centella asiatica in relation to the content of triterpenoids.
To achieve that 129 Primers were designed from the transcriptome sequence
obtained from NCBI. To validate the designed primers 15 primers were selected
and used for genetic diversity analysis in 30 different Centella accessions collected
from different regions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The genetic diversity analysis
result grouped the accessions in to six group based on the genetic distance. Single
accessions was randomly selected from each group to chemical analysis the
asiaticoside content and additionally two phenotypic characters were also
characterised in all 30 collected accessions.
The result of genetic diversity analysis shows the less Nei heterozygosity (0.0433)
between the studied accessions and the positive correlation (0.142) with the
asiaticoside content. From the analysed phenotypic characters, number of leaves
per node character shows the interesting positive correlation (0.291) with
asiaticoside content than genetic diversity. This study gives the positive and
initiative step to the genetic diversity and the asiaticoside content correlations. This
will be helpful to find out the functional marker related to asiaticoside content
which will be useful in MAS studies in future.
