Microsatellites for parentage analysis in an oil palm breeding population

Abstract

Oil palm is an important oil crop in tropical regions. Breeding for improved varieties yielding more oil per area planted is a slow and difficult process. Establishing control-pollinated oil palm progenies for breeding purposes is not without problems as it takes a long time and many steps from pollination, seed collection, germination, to field planting. At each of these steps errors could arise. A breeding programme requires 100% certainty of correct parentage in the progeny trials. The allele frequencies at eight oil palm microsatellite loci were determined among the parents and progenies in an oil palm breeding programme. Paternity and/or parentage likelihoods were calculated for the offspring. Even though the oil palm breeding populations in Southeast Asia are assumed to have low genetic diversity because of their recent introduction from just a few founder trees, the eight loci combined had sufficient power to detect errors with great confidence. Three clear planting errors and one presumed pollination error were detected among 245 individuals in 6 full sib families. The overall genetic structure of the oil palm breeding population was evaluated using the same loci. A combination of four loci was already sufficient to reach a non-exclusion level below 1% for the detection of planting errors. To detect pollination errors confidently, 7 or 8 loci would be necessary.