Vol-3 Issue-6 2017 IJARIIE-ISSN(O)-2395-4396 7043 www.ijariie.com 812 Mining of Genetic diversity of Lavatera cachemiriana native to Kashmir Valley Mudasir A Mir 1* , Amrina Shafi 2 , Insha Zahoor 3 1 Centre for Plant Biotechnology, Division of Biotechnology, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Shalimar, 191121, India. 2 Division of Biotechnology, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, 170761, India. 3 Department of Biotechnology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, 190006, India. * Corresponding author details: Email: mudasirbt@gmail.com ABSTRACT Lavatera cachemiriana is an important endemic medicinal plant of Kashmir Himalayas, the conservation and sustainable utilization are important areas to safeguard it for the future generations. The study of Genetic diversity proves to be useful tool to devise strategies for tackling extinction of any species. Therefore, In the current research work, genetic diversity of L.cachemiriana was undertaken using microsatellite based ISSR markers. The results indicated statistically significant (p<0.05) percentage of polymorphism revealed by markers as 7.50%, 57.14%, 100%, and 100% by ISSR-1, ISSR-2, ISSR-8 and ISSR-9 primers respectively. Nei-Li’s similarity index ranged between 0.716 to 0.945. In conclusion, the ISSR based genetic evaluation has revealed lower but significant levels of genetic diversity among collected accessions. Key words: Genetic characterization, polymorphism, ISSR, molecular diversity, and monormorphic 1.INTRODUCTION Exploration of genetic diversity levels and molecular characterization are emerging as new ways to understand the variation in the genetic makeup of a species. It helps to devise the for conservation, sustainable utilization of any species (Sundaram and Purwar 2011). PCR based molecular markers helps to evaluate genetic diversity and among which Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) are ideal ones for study of genetic diversity. These markers are simple, mostly dominant and occasionally co-dominant, highly polymorphic molecular markers, designed from SSR motifs which shows reproducible results and does not require target DNA sequence information (Chikkaswamy and Prasad, 2012). Lavatera cachemiriana Cambess (Malvaceae) being an important ethno-medicinally important plant of Kashmir Himalayas which is being exploited to such an extent that its distribution is restricted and is considered as an endangered species as per IUCN status (Dar et al., 2002; Kaul, M.K. 1997). It is imperative to devise the strategies for its conservation, germplasm collection and sunsequently sustainable utilization. Therefore, in the current work, we have evaluated genetic diversity of different accessions of Lavatera cachemiriana native to Kashmir.