Construction of EST-SSR Databases for Effective Cultivar Identification and Their Applicability to Complement for Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) Distinctness Test

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to construct a database of expressed sequence tag (EST)-simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers to identify lettuce cultivars. A set of 370 EST-SSR primer pairs were applied for fingerprinting the lettuce cultivars. Fifty-eight EST-SSR markers showed hy-per-variability and were able to differentiate 92 cultivars. A total of 176 polymorphic amplified fragments were obtained by the 58 markers, and two to eight SSR alleles were detected for each l&degCus with an average of three alleles per locus. Average polymorphism information content (PIC) was 0.425, ranging from 0.022 to 0.743. Cluster analysis was based on Jaccard’s distance coefficients using the method of unweighted pair group. In this method we used arithmetical averages (UPGMA) algorithm categorized 4 major groups, which were in accordance to morphological traits. The eight cultivars of three groups with 100% genetic similarity through SSR analysis were investigated by phenotypic traits. These cultivars including these pairs are very similar in 27 morphological characteristics. Therefore, these EST-SSR markers could be used to select similar cultivars through management of reference collection to complement distinctiveness test of lettuce cultivars.