Garlic (Allium sativum L.) is a multipurpose crop of high nutritional and economic value used as vegetable, spice and medicinal plant. The purpose of this research was to assess the genetic variability between indigenous and exotic garlic germplasm using 50 Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. After initial screening 25 RAPD markers were selected for further evaluation of garlic genotypes. All the markers produced 621 polymorphic RAPD amplicons depicting considerable genetic variation for the studied loci. Markers presence/ absence data was used to calculate Euclidean distances among seven garlic genotypes. The highest genetic similarity was observed between MJ-84 & Italian genotype (88%) followed by Lehson Gulabi & GTS-001 (73%) and then Chinese & Italian genotypes (72 %). Moreover, genotypes Iranian, NARC-09 and Chinese were among the most diverse genotypes on the basis of RAPD markers. Similarity coefficient matrix based dendrogram was constructed which distributed all the genotypes into two major clusters. Six out of the seven genotypes were included in the cluster A (Iranian, Italian, MJ-84, GTS-001, Lehson Gulabi and Chinese) while only 1 genotype (NARC-09) was presented in cluster B. NARC-09 showed more divergence in genetic pattern as compared to other genotypes. The present study will pave a way forward for the breeders to efficiently use the available genetic variability in any crop improvement program. In continuation to the experiment conducted, further genomic studies may be carried out to formulate effective marker assisted selection in the crop.              

Keywords: Genetic Variability, Polymorphism, Cluster Analysis, Marker Assisted Selection,