Ten okra (Abelmoschus esculentus (L) Moench.) genotypes were evaluated for their agronomic traits and
molecular diversity. Four agronomic traits, i.e. number of days to 50% flowering; plant height; number of
pods per plant and total yield per plant were evaluated. Amplification of genomic DNA of the ten
genotypes using ISSRs. Seven primers generated 40 fragments, of which 15 were polymorphic with an
average of 5.71 bands per primer. The amplified products varied in size from 1275 to 170 bp. The level of
polymorphism (%P) ranged from 0.00 (UBC-848 and UBC-849) to 75.00 (UBC-840) with an average of
39.29%. The highest polymorphism information content (PIC) value (0.31) was recorded for UBC-825,
while the lowest PIC (0.00) were found with UBC-848 and UBC-849 primers. Genetic similarity values
among genotypes varied from 0.714 to 1.00 with an average 0.857. The dendrogram divided the ten
genotypes into two clusters; the first main cluster included genotypes Escandrany (P7), Annie Oakley (P8),
Dwarf long pod green (P9), Balady (P10) and the second main cluster included the other genotypes. The
Mantel test revealed a negative and significant correlation (r = -0.25) between the Jaccard’s similarity
matrices of agronomic traits and ISSR markers data. It could be concluded that, the information of genetic
similarities and diversity among okra genotypes are necessary for breeding programs.