In Ghana, Dioscorea praehensilis (Berth.) is one of the semi-wild yam cultivated speciesespecially in the cocoa grown regions. Recently, D.praehensilis has been reported to contribute to food security of the small households in the region. In this studywe evaluated the genetic diversityof 43 D. praehensiliscollected from three regions in Ghana using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Using 11 SSR markers, a total of 99 number of alleles were generated with an average of 8.48 alleles per locus. The mean gene diversity was 0.81, mean polymorphism information content was 0.82 while mean Shannon information index was 1.94. Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) revealed a contribution of 40.16% of the first three coordinate axes and grouped the 43 Genotypes into 2 groups while hierarchical cluster through UPGMA revealed the presence of 3 main clusters. Molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed low genetic diversity among the three genetic populations. Results from this study revealed the need to conduct extensive germplasm collection across the country where D. praehensilis are cultivated as source of food to really understand the genetic baseline for its proper utilization in the breeding program as source of novel genes.
Genetic diversity, Dioscorea praehensilis, SSR markers, Ghana