Abstract:
Eucalyptus grandis is an economically important tree species that is native to the Australian continent
and its northern neighbours, where it is grown primarily for its hard wood timber and pulp for paper
industries. It is widely grown in tropical countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Angola, Ghana, and
Zimbabwe. Five ISSR primers generated 41 scorable polymorphic bands which were used to analyse
genetic diversity between and within the seed sources and for construction of neighbour-joining
phenogram. Mean Genetic Diversity per each primer loci based on Nei (1987) statistics indicated
significant genetic variation between seed sources with 26.4%, (Gst = 0.264) of the total variation
attributed to differences between seed sources. The variation between populations could be due to
ecological, geographical association and gene flow rates and hence they should be conserved to retain
the full breadth of genetic variation of the species. Thus, ISSR-PCR technology is a reliable, rapid (high
throughput) and cost effective marker system that can be used to study genetic variation and genetic
relationships among E. grandis seed sources.
