Genetic diversity of 18 male and 18 female accessions of Jojoba [Simmondsia chinensis (link) Schneider] using EST-SSRs

Abstract

Jojoba [Simmondsia chinensis (Link) Schneider] is native shrub of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, commercially utilized for the liquid wax stored in their seeds. It has polyploidy, dioecious, perennial producing, highly heterozygous individual seeds. That is a fact which creates a great mixing of genes when the pollens are blown long distances for fertilization. Genetic diversity is the main source of variability in any crop improvement program. The present study is aimed at evaluating the genetic variation of 18 male and 18 female jojoba accessions using 22 genome-wide SSR markers. Genotyping of 36 jojoba accessions produced a total of 31 alleles in male and 28 alleles in female accessions with an average value of 0.344 and 0.311 for male and female accessions, respectively. Primer BA00213364 showed highest polymorphism information content (PIC) and BA00213368 showed the highest resolving power (Rp) for both male and female accessions in comparison to other primers. Two accessions “879-154 and 40” showed diverse genetic makeup and are placed in a separate Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) in comparison to others. The resultant diverse accessions and polymorphic EST-SSRs in the present study will be used for the identification of economically important traits to be utilized in future molecular breeding programmes of jojoba.