Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2017) 6(5): 2627-2644 2627 Review Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2017.605.295 Molecular Markers in Cotton Improvement Ashok Kumar Meena 1 *, N.V. Mohan Kumar 1 , I.S. Katageri 1 , Ramesh Methre 1 and Bheru Lal Kumhar 2 1 University of Agricultural Sciences Dharwad, 580005, India 2 Agricultural Research Station, Ummedganj Farm, Agriculture University, Kota, India *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction Cotton (Gossypium spp) is the world’s most important natural and textile fiber crop, seeds are good source of vegetable oil and protein meal. Cotton is also called white gold because of economic importance, cotton alone contributes about 4% of national GDP. Cotton belongs to genus Gossypium familly Malvaceae and genus Gossypium comprised of fifty species out of which forty five are diploid (2n=2x=26) and five are tetraploid (2n=4x=52), they occur in semiarid and arid areas of Africa, Central and South America, Galapagos, Indian subcontinent, Australia, Arabia, and Hawaii (Fryxell, 1992). The cultivated cotton includes, two diploid A genome species (G. arborium and G. herbacium) and two allotetraploid AD genome species (G. hirsutum and G. barbadense) (Wendel et al., 1999). In the world cotton is grown in an area of 33.1 million hectares producing 117 million bales with a productivity of 766 kg/ha (Dhruv, 2015). India ranks first in the world in terms of area under cotton cultivation 11.72 million International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 5 (2017) pp. 2627-2644 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com Cotton is the very important commercial and cash crop, it is a very much necessary to improve the Superior agronomic traits to withstand against biotic and abiotic stress in the field and fiber qualities to meet requirement of advance spinning technology. Cotton improvement through conventional breeding is time consuming, in this context molecular markers found that efficient tool to accelerate the plant breeding program in cotton improvement. At present variety of molecular markers are available, choice of molecular marker depends on the user. This review article gives a over view of various molecular markers used in cotton include Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP), Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP), Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR), Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR), Sequence Related Amplified Polymorphism (SRAP) and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP). These markers play a crucial role in crop improvement program like (a) Analysis of Genetic diversity in cotton, (b) Construction of linkage map, (c) QTL analysis agronomic and fiber related traits in cotton (d) Marker assisted selection (MAS). Keywords RFLP, RAPD, AFLP, SSR, ISSR, SRAP, SNP, Genetic diversity, Linkage map, MAS Accepted: 25 April 2017 Available Online: 10 May 2017 Article Info