Assessment of genetic diversity of finger millet blast isolates in Tamil Nadu

Blast disease caused by Magnaporthe grisea is one of the major production constraintsin finger millet. Fourteen M. grisea isolates collected from blast infected leaves andpanicle from different locations of Tamil Nadu were subjected to randomly amplifiedpolymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis using 16 different random primers for assessingdiversity. A total of 83 DNA fragments in the range of 200 to 2000 bp were amplified ofwhich, 62 bands (74.7%) were polymorphic. Cluster analysis with unweighted pairgroup method of arithmetic averages (UPGMA) identified two main clusters.