Molecular Biology Today 2002. 3: 1-10.

Assessment of Profile Variations Amongst Provenances of Neem Using Single-Primer-Amplification Reaction (SPAR) Techniques

S. A. Ranade and Nuzhat Farooqui

The Single Primer Amplification Reaction (SPAR) methodology in conjunction with Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR), minisatellite sequences and arbitrary sequence primers are useful techniques for determination and analysis of genetic diversity in plants. These techniques were applied for the first time to our knowledge in case of neem provenances to reveal genetic relatedness between them on the basis of the discrete profiles produced. However, our results indicate that the neem provenances have greater-than-expected similarities in their inter-SSR and inter-minisatellite regions. These conclusions are in fact similar to those we have made earlier in case of neem provenances using only the RAPD profiles. Thus neem appears to have spread in India starting from only a few groups of the original founder neem plants introduced long ago.