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Salacia reticulata is a medicinally important perennial, woody climbing shrub belonging to the
family Celastraceae. It has become a threatened plant due to its various uses as anti-diabetic and
LDL cholesterol lowering effects. The plants were collected from 8 locations at 3 different forests of
Southern India and established in the Botanical Garden Osmania University. The accessions were
subjected to study of morphological characteristics, HPLC analysis for mangiferin content and
RAPD analysis for study of genetic diversity.
The morphological studies revealed very little variation among the accessions. However, the
exploration of active compound (mangiferin) variation of the collected roots and stems carried out
through High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) revealed that the stems and roots of
accessions of Chittoor District contained the highest content of mangiferin.
Molecular markers have been developed through RAPD analysis. The dendrogram was constructed
on the basis of the similarity matrix data by Unweighted Pair Group Method (UPGMA) with
average cluster analysis. Out of the 10 decamer oligonucleotide primers, nine primers gave nonreproducible
polymorphic bands. Maximum number of polymorphic bands was obtained with four
primers and unique bands were obtained with two oligo primers which can be used in the
development of molecular IDs for the accessions. Though all the collected accessions have
morphological similarity between the groups, genetically they are not 100% similar. This confirms
the suitability of RAPD as an elegant and reliable tool in establishing the genetic relatedness and in
study of changes that occurred in the genome sequence in the course of evolution.
Keywords: Genetic diversity, RAPD-analysis, HPLC analysis, Salacia reticulate.