Genetic Diversity of White Yam (Dioscorea rotundata Poir) Accessions Maintained in Tissue Culture and Cultivated in Field using Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) Markers and Morphological Characterization

Dioscorea rotundata is a staple food crop for millions of people in the tropical and subtropical regions. In vitro germplasm conservation very useful tool yam improvement strategies but little known about genetic integrity stability in-vitro conserved plants. this study, 42 accessions from field populations were genotyped using 11 microsatellite markers 23 morphological descriptors to assess variability within between accessions. Out variables used, 13 identified as most discriminate used cluster into 4 clusters unweighted pair group arithmetic mean average (UPGMA). Accession maintained well showed high similarity (R2 = 0.91, p-value: 1e-04). analyzed, nine displayed different profiles. This study provided basic information on possible somaclonal variation through in-vitro. Further with advanced tools such next-generation sequencing required elucidate nature observed clones.