Microsatellite Markers: Valuable in Vaccinium L.

Abstract

The United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, National Clonal Germplasm Repository, Corvallis, Oregon, maintains a collection of Vaccinium L. that contains >1,700 accessions representing 66 species from 33 countries. The mission of the National Clonal Germplasm Repository is to acquire, preserve, evaluate, document, and freely distribute crop germplasm. Microsatellite (syn. simple sequence repeat) markers provide a unique fingerprint for identifying germplasm accessions and are useful for genetic diversity analysis and in saturating genetic maps. The National Clonal Germplasm Repository Genetics Lab was the first to develop 39 simple sequence repeat primer pairs from expressed sequence tags and 10 simple sequence repeat primer pairs from a genomic microsatellite-enriched library of ‘Bluecrop’. Simple sequence repeat markers from these 49 primer pairs were identified for providing unique fingerprints for blueberry, cranberry, and ohelo berry; evaluating genetic diversity of wild and cultivated blueberry and southern highbush blueberry cultivars; assessing the effect of wide hybridization on genetic diversity and heterozygosity of the cultivated blueberry; populating the diploid Fl #10 (Fla4B x W85-20) x W85-23 and the tetraploid ‘Draper’ x ‘Jewel’ linkage maps; supplying a source of useful markers in 22 species representing nine Vaccinium sections; and use in population genetic analyses in diploid Vaccinium section Myrtillus taxa, such as V. calycinum, V. reticulatum, V. scoparium, and V. praestans. Over 450 simple sequence repeat primer pairs were recently designed from newly generated blueberry expressed sequence tags as part of a Specialty Crop Research Initiative project to develop genomic tools for blueberry, and will provide a valuable resource for the Vaccinium research and breeding community.