Background: At present, species known as camote de cerro (
Dioscorea
spp.) are found only in the wilderness in
Mexico, but their populations are extremely depleted because they are indiscriminately collected, it is urgent
to evaluate the conservation status of these plants in order to design conservation genetics programs. In this
study, genetic diversity parameters along with cluster analysis based on Jaccard's coefficient were estimated
with the objective to assess the efficiency of Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Inter Simple Sequence
Repeat (ISSR), Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) and Inverse Sequence Tagged Repeat (ISTR)
molecular DNA markers in the
Dioscorea genus.
Results: The polymorphic information contents were quite similar for all markers (≈0.48). Genetic variation of
Dioscorea spp., in terms of average heterozygosity was lower with ISTR (0.36), and higher when other markers
were used (RAPD = 0.43; ISSR = 0.45 and AFLP = 0.47).
Conclusion: This indicates an important level of genetic differences despite the fact that the plant is asexually
propagated. Based on the diversity statistics, any marker tested in present work can be recommended for use
in large-scale genetic studies of populations. However, the low correlations among different molecular marker
systems show the importance of the complementarity of the information that is generated by different markers
for genetic studies involving estimation of polymorphism and relationships.
