Development of a Molecular Marker for Fruiting Body Pattern in<i>Auricularia auricula-judae</i>

Abstract

The fruiting body pattern is an important agronomic trait of the edible fungus <i>Auricularia auricula-judae</i>, and an important breeding target. There are two types of fruiting body pattern: the cluster type and the chrysanthemum type. We identified the fruiting body pattern of 26 test strains, and then constructed two different near-isogenic pools. Then, we developed sequence characterized amplified region (SCAR) molecular markers associated with the fruiting body pattern based on sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) markers. Ten different bands (189-522 bp) were amplified using 153 pairs of SRAP primers. The SCAR marker "SCL-18" consisted of a single 522-bp band amplified from the cluster-type strains, but not the chrysanthemum strains. This SCAR marker was closely associated with the cluster-type fruiting body trait of <i>A. auricula-judae</i>. These results lay the foundation for further research to locate and clone genes controlling the fruiting body pattern of <i>A. auricula-judae</i>.