IDENTIFICATION OF CASTOR (RICINUS COMMUNIS L.) ECOTYPES THROUGH MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION IN THE SELECTED REGIONS OF THE WESTERN GHATS OF KARNATAKA, INDIA

Author(s): KG Manjunath and B Sannappa

Abstract

Castor (Ricinus communis L.) being a perennial crop widely grown for oil seed production in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Nevertheless, the leaf of castor serves as a primary food for the eri silkworm, Samia cynthia ricini Boisduval. Eri silkworm being a polyvoltine requires leaf throughout the year for its survival and cocoon production. Keeping this in view, an attempt has been made to identify (through molecular characterization) the best castor ecotype(s) found in different regions of Western Ghats of Karnataka, India for leaf production. The ecotypes were processed through DNA sequencing using ITS4 and ITS5 primers. The sequence results were authenticated through National Centre for Biotechnology Information by way of obtaining accession numbers (phylogenetic tree). Further, leaf samples were subjected to SDS-PAGE to know the variations existed among the ecotypes in protein profile. The results revealed that, ecotypes of different regions exhibits close relation among them and some marginal variations were evident in phylogenetic tree as well as in dendrogram. However, phylogenetic relationship of ecotypes in the major clade II and cluster III showed similar in both phylogeny and dendrogram for eight among 12 ecotypes representing different agroecological regions of Western Ghats of Karnataka. Further, five ecotypes showed close relationship in both phylogenetic as well as in cluster dendrogram, but in clades I and III, bootstrap values showed minor variation among the ecotypes representing different regions of the Western Ghats, whereas, in protein profile clusters I and II showed similarities between the ecotypes having genetic distance of 0.57. The maximum of 18 protein bands were found in KJ130046 ecotype, accordingly, minimum bands (10) were noticed in both KJ000404 and KJ000405 ecotypes.

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