American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2019, 10, 462-485 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ajps ISSN Online: 2158-2750 ISSN Print: 2158-2742 DOI: 10.4236/ajps.2019.103033 Mar. 21, 2019 462 American Journal of Plant Sciences Genetic Diversity Estimates of Santalum album L. through Microsatellite Markers: Implications on Conservation Tanzeem Fatima 1* , Ashutosh Srivastava 1 , Vageeshbabu S. Hanur 2 , P. V. Somashekar 1 , M. Srinivasa Rao 3 1 Genetics and Tree Improvement Division, Institute of Wood Science and Technology, Bangalore, India 2 Division of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore, India 3 Woodworking Division, Institute of Wood Science and Technology, Bangalore, India Abstract Sandalwood (Santalum album L.) is the second most expensive wood in the world. There are approximately 16 species of sandalwood (S. album, S. spica- tum, S. austrocaledonicum, S. yasi, S. lanceolatum, S. ellipticum, S. macgre- gorii, S. insulare) occurring naturally throughout Australia, India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the islands of the South Pacific. In India, S. album is found all over the country, with over 90% of the area in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state. It is highly economic tropical tree species because of its scented heartwood and heartwood oil. Sev- eral causes have been attributed to the depletion of sandalwood population mainly amongst which theft is causing negative effect on the quality of species by constant removal of superior clones. The aim of this study was to deter- mine the genetic diversity of S. album. For this, 177 genotypes of S. album from 14 populations of three states (Karnataka, Telangana state and Kerala) in southern India were selected. The genetic diversity and genetic structure were characterized through 25 SSR markers developed by cross amplification of different species of Sandalwood. Under this study, following genetic diver- sity parameters were estimated at individual level and population level; Number of alleles (Na) 9.107, Effective number of alleles (Ne) 7.56, Observed heterozygosity (Ho) 0.187, Expected heterozygosity (He) 0.861, Shannon in- formation index (I) 2.03, F statistics 0.89, Polymorphic information content (PIC) 0.87 and Gene flow (Nm) 4.98. The estimates of gene flow among the populations of Kodada Telangana (Nm = 15.109); IWST Karnataka (Nm = 13.62) than across other geographical populations (Nm = 9.40). Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed that 3% of the total variation was due How to cite this paper: Fatima, T., Srivas- tava, A., Hanur, V.S., Somashekar, P.V. and Srinivasa Rao, M. (2019) Genetic Diversity Estimates of Santalum album L. through Microsatellite Markers: Implications on Conservation. American Journal of Plant Sciences, 10, 462-485. https://doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2019.103033 Received: January 17, 2019 Accepted: March 18, 2019 Published: March 21, 2019 Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access