Dna-based Genotyping of Sorghum Hybrids

Over the last two decades, DNA fingerprinting have been increasingly used to characterize germplasm of different organisms including crop plants, which was otherwise difficult with morphological and or isozyme markers because of paucity of genetic information at phenotypic level. In the present study, two hybrid samples of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) received from Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department (FSC&RD), Islamabad Pakistan for DNAbased typing to prove their identity. A DNA fingerprinting technique, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was applied to find DNA polymorphisms using 20 different 10-mer primers. Out of these, 8 (40%) primers detected polymorphism between the hybrids. However, rest of the primers produced monomorphic pattern. Out of the 121 amplified loci, 33% were polymorphic. These polymorphic primers distinguished the sorghum hybrids. Our results revealed that RAPD is a useful tool in the identification of hybrids. In future, it can be utilized to estimate the extent of genetic diversity and warranting genome mapping studies in sorghum.