Vol. 9, Special Issue 12, Part O (2025)

In the present study, 49 rice genotypes, including 45 landraces and 4 checks, were characterized using eight Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers to assess molecular diversity. Genomic DNA extracted from 21-day-old seedlings was amplified using standard PCR protocols, generating clear and reproducible banding patterns. A total of 16 alleles were detected across the markers, indicating measurable genetic variability. Polymorphism information content (PIC) values ranged from 0.04 to 0.49, with RM11307 showing the highest discriminatory power, consistent with earlier reports highlighting the effectiveness of SSRs in rice diversity studies (McCouch et al., 2002) ^[13].

Cluster analysis using UPGMA based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficients grouped the genotypes into 24 distinct clusters at a 0.1 similarity level. Cluster VI contained the largest number of genotypes, while several clusters with only one or two entries reflected unique or rare allelic patterns, a characteristic frequently observed in traditional landraces (Roy et al., 2015) ^[16]. Overall, the findings reaffirm that SSR markers are highly efficient tools for detecting genetic variation in rice and highlight the importance of landraces as valuable resources for breeding programmes (Zeng et al., 2019) ^[22].