There are a great diversity of colors, sizes and aromas of fruits in wild accessions of P. edulis in Brazilian Savannah. These accessions are also important resistance sources against illness which can be incorpored in passionfruit breeding programs. In this work, the objetive was to evaluate the genetic variability in wild and commercial P. edulis accessions using RAPD markers. The genomic DNA of each accession was extracted and amplified using thirteen decamer primers (OPD-04, OPD-07, OPD-08, OPD-16, OPE-18, OPE-20, OPF-01, OPF-14, OPG-05, OPG-08, OPH-04, OPH-12 and OPH-16) to obtain RAPD markers. These markers were transformed in binary matrix data to estimate genetic distances among accessions and to perform cluster and graphical dispersion analysis. A total of 187 markers were generated, and only 28 (14.97%) of them were monomorphic. The genetic distances among the 15 P. edulis accessions varied from 0.091 to 0.496. The molecular markers demonstrated the high genetic variability of the wild and commercial P. edulis accessions. The accessions with yellow fruits presented greater genetic distances in relation to the accessions with purple fruits. Lower genetic distances were verified among the accesses of the same geographical origin.
passionfruit; molecular markers; intraespecific variability
