Evaluation of SSRs (microsatellites) for detecting genetic variability in oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) clone Jayanthi M1,*, Sarika N, Sujatha G, Mathur R K, Rao C S2, Mandal P K3 Directorate of, Oil Palm Research, Pedavegi, West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, 534 450 1Present address: Division of Floriculture and Landscaping, IARI, Pusa, New Delhi, 110 012 2Bennetzen Lab, Divison of Life Sciences Building, University of Georgia, USA 3National Research Centre for Plant Biotechnology, IARI, Pusa, New Delhi, 110 012 *Corresponding author: jayman21@gmail.com
Online published on 21 March, 2016. Abstract An experiment was conducted for detecting genetic variability in oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) clone, Tornado, using SSRs or microsatellites, during 2007–09, at the Directorate of Oil Palm Research, Pedavegi, Andhra Pradesh. Tissue cultured clones of oil palm were imported from ASD Costa Rica for the first time to India and were planted at farmers’ fields during 2006 by a private firm. Morphological variations were studied when the plantations were three years old. Twenty-four plants of the clone, Tornado, were selected at random from a batch of 200 plants. The DNA was extracted from the spear leaves and 10ng of DNA from each sample was amplified using SSR primers. The 20 SSR primers used were designed from the reported oil palm microsatellite sites. The amplified products were separated on a 15% acrylamide gel. Seven SSR primers showed monomorphic bands. The number of alleles per locus ranged from one allele for SSR 204 to four alleles at SSR 230. In order to illustrate genetic diversity among oil palm accessions, a dendrogram was obtained from the similarity matrix by minimum evolution method. The dendrogram clustered the accessions according to their similarities calculated as proportion of shared alleles. All the palms fell into three distinct clusters, which indicates that these accessions might have at least three different origins. Based on these results six SSR primers, viz. SSR 48, SSR 119, SSR 138, SSR 176, SSR 215 and SSR 226 were selected as potential primers which can detect variation in these clones. Top Keywords Accessions, Clones, Dendrogram, Genetic variation, Microsatellites, Oil palm, Simple sequence repeats (SSRs). Top |