Molecular characterization of gherkin genotypes using SSR markers of cucumber

Genetic diversity pattern evaluation is required for effective breeding. In this study, 7 gherkin (Cucumis anguria L.) genotypes are evaluated by using 21 SSR markers of cucumber. A total of 24 alleles are produced from 12 different loci with 2.00 alleles per locus with an average of 2.00 alleles per locus (Na: number of different alleles), whereas the effective number of alleles (Ne) ranged from 1.153 (SSR02895) to 1.960 (SSR15477) with an average of 1.218. The major allele frequency (FX) of each locus varied from 0.5714 at SSR15477 to 0.9286 at SSR02895 with a mean of 0.839. Shannon’s index (I), the average I was 0.252 and the range was between 0.257 (SSR02895) to 0.683 (SSR15477). The marker SSR02895 exhibited a maximum observed heterozygosity (Ho) value of 0.143 with the fixation value-0.077. The marker SSR15477 had the highest expected heterozygosity (He) of 0.490 whereas; SSR02895 had the lowest gene diversity of 0.133. The marker SSR15477 exhibited the highest polymorphism information content (PIC) value of 0.3698 and marker SSR02895 exhibited the lowest PIC value of 0.1239 with the mean of 0.1258. These results suggest that SSR markers of cucumber are a suitable tool to study the genetic diversity among different genotypes in gherkin.