www.tjprc.org editor@tjprc.org GENETIC RELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS OF PLANTS IN THE GENUS JATROPHA IN THAILAND USING ISSR TECHNIQUES PATTAMON SANGIN & KUNTAPONG SRISANG Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Naresuan University, Thailand ABSTRACT There are 5 species of Jatropha in Thailand. However, Jatropha curcas is the only one which is attracted as an alternative to biodiesel. It is widely distributed in many areas in Thailand. Therefore, objectives of this study were to determine the genetic relationships among 24 samples of the genus Jatropha using Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR). A total of 39 ISSR primers were used for initial screening, only 5 primers, MAO UBC808 UBC827 UBC873 and UBC835 were found to give polymorphic patterns. These ISSR primers amplified 54 polymorphic bands (0.35-2.3 Kb). The similarity coefficient using NTSYS pc (version 2.20e) ranged from 0.66-1.00 among J. curcas and interspecific level of Jatropha ranged from 0.472- 0.717. The dendogram was constructed base on SHAH clustering technique of UPGMA which divided the 24 samples into 3 groups. Group I consisted of 19 samples of J. curcas and J. multifida which J. curcas (Lampoon, Thailand) was closely related to J. curcas (Laos) with high similarity index was 1.000. Group 2 was J. integerrima (1), J. integerrima (2) and J. gossypifolia formed a group together. Within this group J. integerrima (1) and J. integerrima (2) were closer to each other with high similarity index was 0.943 and group 3 was J. podagrica. KEYWORDS: Genetic Relationship, Jatropha, ISSR Technique Received: May 29, 2016; Accepted: Jun 16, 2016; Published: Jun 21, 2016; Paper Id.: IJBTRAUG20161 INTRODUCTION Jatropha belonging to the family Euphobiaceae has around 200 species distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Jatropha is a drought-resistant perennial crop able to grow in a wide range of soils, grows relatively quickly and producing seeds for 50 years. Jatropha curcas is the only one which is attracted as an alternative to biodiesel and it is a native plant of Mexico and Central America region. It has a very high oil content of 40-50% from seed. The oil was found to contain high levels of unsaturated fatty acids, especially oleic and linoleic (Nzikou, et al., 2009). However, it is very low fruits, uneven ripening and less number of female flowers. Previous studies on Jatropha focused on only medical and chemical compound. Therefore, an understanding of population genetic diversity for breeding program is needed. Recently, molecular markers are a powerful technique for investigate genetic diversity of plants due to independent of the influence of environment. Moreover, molecular markers provide polymorphism that required to measure genetic relationships and genetic diversity in a reliable manner (Murty et al., 2013). ISSR technique was developed by Zietkiewicz et al. (1994). ISSRs are semi-arbitrary markers amplified by PCR in the presence of one primer complementary to the target microsatellite-primed PCR. Amplification does not require genome sequence information and lead to multilocus and highly polymorphous patterns. Each band corresponds to a DNA sequence delimited by two inverted microsatellites. Like RAPDs, ISSR markers are quick and easy to handle, but Original Article International Journal of Bio-Technology and Research (IJBTR) ISSN (P):2249-6858; ISSN (E):2249-796X Vol. 6, Issue 4, Aug 2016, 1-6 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.