Acid lime (Citrus aurantifolia) is an important commercial fruits crop, cultivated in terai to high hills of Nepal. High variation of acid lime fruits are observed in existing landraces due to crossing within the other citrus species. Determination of genetic variation is important to the plant breeders for development of high yielding variety and hybrids. Therefore, an attempt has been made to study the genetic diversity of 62 acid lime landraces, collected from different altitudinal range in the eastern part of Nepal, using SSR markers. Twelve Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) primer pairs were used to assess the genetic diversity of acid lime. The average genetic similarity level among the 62 accessions was 0.77, ranging from 0.54 to 1.0 and separated five major cluster groups. Total of 33 alleles were detected by eleven primer pairs and size of alleles ranged from 50 to 225. Average polymorphic information content (PIC) value was 0.50, whereas highest 0.75 and lowest 0.18 was observed in CAT01 and GT03 loci respectively. The results of the study clearly indicated that, SSR markers are highly polymorphic and more informative for the assessment of genetic diversity of acid lime landraces.

Acid Lime (Citrus aurantifolia Swingle) is one of the important commercial fruits cultivated from terai to high hill of Nepal. It is an important source of vitamin "C" (ascorbic acid) for human nutrition. Amount of juice, TSS (Total soluble solids), TA (Titrable acid) and vitamin C are the determining factors of quality of acid lime fruits which may vary according to bearing sides of the trees. The main objective of this study is, to determine the variation of fruit quality at different sides of the tree. Total of 15 bearing trees were selected randomly (5 trees per site) from three different agro ecological domain representing terai (<600 m asl), mid hills (600 to 1200 m asl) and high hill areas (>1200 m asl) and samples were collected from the selected trees. Randomly ten fruits (from east, west, centre, north and south sides) were collected from each tree and analyzed for amount of vitamin C, TSS, TA and juice. Highest ascorbic acid 79.6 mg and 69.9 mg was observed in south side fruits whereas lowest 62.8 mg and 55.1 mg was observed in centre fruits in the high and mid hills zone respectively, but in terai, highest ascorbic acid 58.7 mg was observed in north side and lowest 41.8 mg was observed in centre. Highest amount of juice 43.9% was observed in south side fruits and lowest 36.6% in centre fruits, but amount of TSS 8.2% and TA 7.2% was observed in south side fruits and lowest 7.3% TSS and 7.0% TA was observed in centre fruits in high hills. In terai highest TSS 8.3% and TA 7.4% was observed in north side fruits and lowest TSS 7.3% and TA 6.7% was observed in centre fruits. Variation of TSS, TA percent and ascorbic acids was observed according to the agro ecological zone.