Increase of the genetic diversity of the germplasm bank of Cactus pear using RAPD molecular markers

The objective of this research was to increase the genetic diversity of the Nopal Germplasm Bank of the FAUANL using RAPD molecular markers to estimate the genetic diversity of 15 accessions of cactus pear from molecular markers recorded in the Bank. DNA extraction was performed by the method of cellular ruptor using FastDNA (R) Kit. Performance measurement of DNA was carried out through Picoflour. It was observed that the DNA concentrations ranged from 74.91 ng/mu L., to 12.32 ng/uL. Twelve primers were used to generate from 1 to 5 bands per primer with a molecular weight ranging from 200 to 1000 bp. The average diversity index (DI) of the 15 accessions was 0.8539. For the analysis of molecular data, it was used the binary matrix of 20 markers recorded in the bank, along with the markers generated from the collected accesions. We used cluster analysis by the method of unweighted pair-grouping (UPGMA). The generated dendrogram showed clearly that there was no accession with a genetic distance of zero, and it was determined that there was no duplication among the mentioned accessions.