EST-PCR, EST-SSR and ISSR markers to identify a set of wild cranberries and evaluate their relationships

Abstract

An, D., Bykova, N. V. and Debnath, S. C. 2015. EST-PCR, EST-SSR and ISSR markers to identify a set of wild cranberries and evaluate their relationships. Can. J. Plant Sci. 95: 1155-1165. The cranberry (Vaccinium marcrocarpon Ait.) is a woody, evergreen, perennial vine with great potential for economic and health benefits. Selection and use of genetically diverse genotypes are key factors in any crop breeding program to develop cultivars with a broad genetic base. Molecular markers play a major role in selecting diverse genotypes. One hundred and two wild cranberry clones collected from four Canadian provinces and five cultivars were screened with inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR), expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeat (EST-SSR) and EST-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) markers to validate the genetic diversity and relationships among them. EST-PCRs (0.54) and EST-SSRs (0.35) generated higher frequency of major alleles than ISSRs (0.08), but ISSRs presented a higher level of polymorphism and greate...