Cross-species transferability of EST-SSR markers derived from the transcriptome of kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) and their application to genus Hibiscus

Abstract

The genus Hibiscus comprises approximately 300 diverse species whose genetic relationships have not been extensively clarified. In this study, we evaluated the cross-species transferability of 102 expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeat (EST-SSR) markers derived from the transcriptome of kenaf H. cannabinus L. and used them to assess the genetic diversity and inter-relationships of 87 accessions and 7 cultivars of 18 Hibiscus species. Among 102 markers, 100 (98%) were polymorphic in these 94 accessions/cultivars. The rates of cross-species transferability of the EST-SSR markers ranged from 83 H. trionum L. to 99% H. ponticus Rupr., with an average of 89.9%. A total of 871 alleles were detected using the 100 polymorphic EST-SSR markers; the number of alleles ranged from 2 (RBRC_Hc_ES_76) to 16 (RBRC_Hc_ES_80) and averaged 8.71. Polymorphism information content values varied from 0.15 (RBRC_Hc_ES_74) to 0.84 (RBRC_Hc_ES_3, RBRC_Hc_ES_95), with an average of 0.56. Phylogenetic and population structure analyses classified the 94 accessions/cultivars into two and two or three groups, respectively. Overall, our results demonstrate that the EST-SSR markers derived from the kenaf transcriptome were applied successfully to other Hibiscus species to provide useful information on the genetic diversity of this genus.