A total of 52 rice SSR markers well distributed on 12 chromosomes were used
to characterize and assess the genetic diversity among ninety four rice
genotypes. The total number of polymorphic alleles was 361 alleles with the
average of 5.86 alleles per SSR locus. The study revealed that some markers
such as RM276 and RM5642 on chromosome 6 and RM14 and RM1 on chromosome 1
have more than 9 observed alleles compared to other primers like RM16, RM207,
RM208 and RM317 with 3-4 alleles. The highest and lowest PIC values were
observed for primers RM276 (0.892 and RM208 (0.423) respectively. Using
Shannon´s diversity index, a mean genetic diversity of 1.641 was obtained
from the analysis, indicating a high level of genetic variation among these
cultivars. Cluster analysis using the complete linkage method based on
jaccard similarity coefficient revealed that all genotypes were classified to
nine clusters at genetic similarity level of 0.010.75, which contained 12,
16, 2, 18, 3, 6, 16, 10 and 11 varieties, respectively. Results of
discriminant analysis showed that the nine cluster groups were confirmed at
high levels of correct percent (96.8) and revealed true differences among
these clusters. As a final result from this study, we selected eight
cultivars from different cluster including Daylamani, Tarom mohali (landrace
rice cultivars), RI1843046, Back cross line, RI184472, RI184421 (promising
cultivars), Line 23 and IR50 (IRRI lines) as parents. All of the selected
cultivars will be arranged in complete diallel design to obtain combining
abilities, gene effects and heterosis for each important morphology and
physico-chemical characters