Erlinawati I, Abinawanto, Salamah A, Rugayah. 2018. Genetic diversity analysis of daluga (Cyrtosperma merkusii) using Sequence-Related Amplified Polymorphism in Siau, Sangihe and Talaud Islands, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 19: 2374-2380. Daluga or the giant swamp taro (Cyrtosperma merkusii (Hassk.) Schott, a member of Araceae, is one of the minor tuber crops in Indonesia. It has high nutritional value for alternative food. Sequences-Related Amplified Polymorphism (SRAP) primers combinations were used for the first time to assess the genetic diversity among 36 of daluga accessions from several locations in Siau, Sangihe and Talaud islands, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. All of the samples were successfully extracted from silica-gel dried leaves using CTAB methods with minor modifications. Using six SRAP primer combinations, a total of 80 DNA fragments were yielded, varied from 75-1500 bp. The scoring of the fragments resulted in 68 (85.03%) polymorphic bands. Amongst four populations studied, Siau Island population has the highest level of genetic variation with mean values of Na = 1.9375±0.2436, Ne = 1.6409 ± 0.3255, PPL = 93.75%, H = 0.3614 ± 0.1516 and I = 0.5299 ± 0.1978. Meanwhile, Salibabu, Talaud Island population has the lowest level of genetic variation with mean values of Na = 1.5125 ± 0.5030, Ne = 1.3075 ± 0.3723 , PPL = 51.25%, H = 0.1800 ± 0.1989 and I = 0.2700 ± 0.2855. The high of polymorphic bands were generated by SRAP markers suitable for further analysis method in applied and basic of the genetic study on Cyrtosperma species and also related genera. This new genetic information can be used for baseline data for further research especially to improving the variation of daluga and for the conservation of daluga in the future.

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Phylogenetic analysis is beneficial to plant conservation prioritization. Conservation does not only deal with species but also their evolutionary potential. A phylogenetic tree is usually reconstructed by using the alignment of DNA sequences. However, with the availability of megatrees, subsetting with a list of species of concern is possible. Here we reconstructed a list of 53 Alocasia spp. (Araceae) from Indonesia and adjacent regions using available megatrees and publicly available DNA sequences in the GenBank. The result showed placed and unplaced Alocasia spp. on the terminal nodes of reconstructed phylogenetic trees. The unplaced species show that publicly available DNA sequences are not yet available, therefore should be prioritized for sequencing. The placed species in the phylogeny could be used for conservation prioritization of these Alocasia spp. Keywords: Alocasia, Indonesia, Megatree, Phylogeny, Plant conservation