Microsatellite markers reveal Cameroon’s wild oil palm population as a possible solution to broaden the genetic base in the Indonesia-Malaysia oil palm breeding programs

Abstract

Intensive breeding from a narrow genetic base of the South East Asian oil palm industry has led to limited variation within elite breeding population thereby reducing the rate of future breeding progress. The use of wild genotypes are known to broaden the genetic base of breeding populations because of their high rate of heterozygosity. Historical evidence show that Cameroon has supplied wild genetic material to the major oil palm breeding programmes in the world. The aim of this study was to study the extent of genetic diversity existing in the present Cameroonian oil palm wild population and detectgenotypes which could be used for recombinations in breeding programmes. Thirty nine accessions consisting of five palms each were analysed using 16 simple sequence repeats (SSR) loci. The results show the percentage of polymorphic loci at 96.43% with a mean polymorphic information content (PIC) of 0.60. The number of alleles (Na) was at 4.71 while the effective number of Alleles (Ne) was at 2.30 ± 0.90. Genetic similarity between individuals was very low with genetic similarity (I) at 0.29. The high values formean expected heterozygosity (He), observed heterozygosity (Ho) and polymorphic loci, suggest this population had a high genetic variability. The use of this molecular data complemented with agro morphological data will greatly enhance new breeding programs in oil palm. Key words: Cameroon wild oil palm, elite breeding population, polymorphic information content (PIC), breeding programmes, simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers, Elaeis guineensis.