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Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is central to the lives of billions of people around the world. Rice is rich in
genetic diversity, with thousands of varieties grown throughout the world and a very little genetic
diversity of those crop plants has been used for the development of agriculture. Knowledge and
assessment of the genetic diversity of germplasm collections is an important foundation for
germplasm management processes and for crop improvement. This study was conducted to assess the
genetic diversity and to identify duplicates among 14 Suwandal rice accessions, which are conserved
at the seed gene bank of Plant Genetic Resources Centre (PGRC),Gannoruwa, Sri Lanka. Accessions
were established in the experimental field at PGRC during ‘Yala’ season, 2015. Morphological
characters were scored according to the standard descriptors for Rice. Molecular assessment was done
' using 11 microsatellite markers, and resolved by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Statistical
analysis was done for morphological and molecular data using MINITAB and POWERMARKER
softwares respectively. Results revealed that there is considerable amount of genetic diversity among
tested accessions in both moiphological and molecular levels. High variation among the accessions
was observed in plant height, maturity, grain width and grain length, ligule length, panicle
threshability, panicle length, culm strength, culm diameter, 100 grain weight, days to heading, sterile
lemma length and in lemma and paleacolour. Analysis based on morphological markers revealed that
the most distantly related accession as Ac # 12844 and the most closely related accessions as Ac #
13300 and AC # 11340, Ac # 10729 and Ac # 04471. Analysis based on molecular markers revealed
the highest genetic distance in between Ac # 04197, Ac # 10646 and in between Ac # 12827 and Ac #
04595.The most closely related accessions were recorded as Ac # 13300 and AC # 11340 and
according to the Nei’s (1983) distance matrix duplicates were hot identified with 100% similarity.
