ABSTRACT
Currently in Colombia, there are only records of morph-agronomic characterizations of Mangifera indica cvar. Hilacha; molecular studies on this mango variety have not been carried out. The aim of this work was to identify the genetic diversity of six populations of mango Hilacha by RAPDs markers, as a fundamental base for breeding programs, conservation and selection of promissory materials for the fruit industry at the national level. From 60 primers evaluated in the populations, five primers were selected and were launched in the six populations. Polymorphic bands of RAPDs were transformed into binary matrices, which were then processed with NTSYS-PC, POPGENE and TFPGA softwares. The overall genetic diversity, H T = 0.468 +/- 0.0016, is very similar to the average subpopulation genetic diversity, H S = 0.4431 +/- 0.0024, which revealed a small genetic differentiation among the mango Hilacha populations studied (G ST = 0.0532). This means that each population contained in average 95 percent of the total genetic diversity found in the global population analyzed. Considerable gene flow between populations (Nm = 9) was found. Finally, we recommend studying the genetic diversity of mango Hilacha populations with other molecular markers to complement the information obtained and to find similarities or differences with the results presented herein.