Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2013
In the present study, inter- and intrapopulation diversity of five named rice landraces from parts of Odisha state of India representing static and dynamic management was examined using 14 sequence-tagged microsatellite site primer pairs. A total of 64 alleles were detected in ten populations of the five named landraces. The number of alleles ranged from 2 to 7, with an average of 4.57 alleles per locus. Of the 64 alleles, 60 were common and four were rare. Moderate-to-low diversity was observed in the landrace populations, with the number of alleles per population ranging from 16 to 25 and the percentage of polymorphism ranging from 14.29 to 64.29, respectively. The analysis of molecular variance indicated a highest variation of 75.7% among populations within groups (static vs. dynamic). The pairwise estimates of FST revealed very high significant population differentiation, which ranged from 0.68 to 0.89, indicating that the populations share limited genetic diversity among them. However, not many variations were observed in the phenotypes of populations representing static and dynamic management. This shows that adaptations of a population apparently persist over generations, but the underlying genotypes change and new alleles or combinations may arise and increase in frequency at the expense of other alleles that have disappeared. The importance of population biology research for in situ conservation requires both descriptive and hypothesis testing to guide technical improvement and management of landrace populations.