Allelic divergence and cultivar-specific SSR alleles revealed by capillary electrophoresis using fluorescence-labeled SSR markers in sugarcane.

Though sugarcane cultivars (Saccharum spp. hybrids) are complex aneupolyploid hybrids, genetic evaluation and tracking of clone- or cultivar-specific alleles become possible through capillary electrophoresis (CE) using fluorescence-labeled SSR markers. Twenty-four sugarcane cultivars, 12 each from India and the USA, were genetically assessed using 21 fluorescence-labeled polymorphic SSR markers. These markers primed the amplification of 213 alleles. Of these alleles, 161 were common to both Indian and US cultivars, 25 were specific to the Indian cultivars, and 27 were observed only in the US cultivars. Only 10 alleles were monomorphic. A high level of heterozygosity was observed in both Indian (82.4%) and US (91.1%) cultivars resulting in average polymorphism information content (PIC) values of 0.66 and 0.77 and marker index (MI) values of 5.07 and 5.58, respectively. Pearson correlation between PIC and MI was significant in both sets of cultivars (r = 0.58 and 0.69). UPGMA clustering separated cultivars into three distinct clusters at 59% homology level. These results propose the potential utility of six Indian cultivar-specific SSR alleles (mSSCIR3_182, SMC486CG_229, SMC36BUQ_125, mSSCIR74_216, SMC334BS_154, and mSSCIR43_238) in sugarcane breeding, vis a vis transporting CE-based evaluation in clone or variety identity testing, cross fidelity assessments, and genetic relatedness among species of the genus Saccharum and related genera.