Abstract
The cacao plant, Theobroma cacao L., produces white seeds (beans) that form the major ingredient of processed chocolate. A great deal of research effort has been expended to the development of new genetically modified cacao plants with improved productivity and resistance and beans of good industrial quality. The availability of suitable genetic markers is an important aspect of the efficient selection and breeding of this perennial species. We describe the development of 123 microsatellite loci of cacao. An optimized protocol was used to construct and screen a microsatellite-enriched genomic library from which we isolated 64 di-nucleotide, 45 tri-nucleotide and 14 tetra-nucleotide microsatellite loci. The primers were tested on samples from five different T. cacao accessions, one accession from T. grandiflorum and one accession from Herranea sp. Among the 123 loci, 54 were polymorphic, 61 were monomorphic and eight did not present an amplification product. These new markers will be useful in future studies by increasing the accuracy of genotypic assessments in diverse cocoa tree populations as well as in other species of the Theobroma genus.
References
Charters YM, Wilkinson MJ (2000) The use of self-pollinated progenies as “in-groups” for the genetic characterization of cocoa germoplasm. Theor Appl Genet 100:160–166
Faleiro FG, Pires JL, Monteiro WR, Lopes UV, Yamada MM, Piedra AG, Moura AD, Gardini EA, Marques JRB, Gramacho KP, Faleiro ASG, Santos MCM (2004) Variability in cacao accessions from the Brazilian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazons based on molecular markers. Crop Breed Appl Biotechnol 4:227–233
Faleiro FG, Araújo IS, Bahia RCS, Santos RF, Yamada MM, Ahnert D (2002) Otimização da extração e amplificação de DNA de Theobroma cacao L. visando a obtenção de marcadores RAPD. Agrotropica 14:31–34
Figueira AVO, Cascardo JCM (2001) Marcadores moleculares no melhoramento. In: Dias LAS (ed) Melhoramento Genético do Cacaueiro, 1st edn. Funape, Viçosa, pp 385–438
Lanaud C, Risterucci AM, Pieretti I, Falque M, Bouet A, Lagoda PJL (1999) Isolation and characterization of microsattelites in Theobroma cacao L. Mol Ecol 8:2141–2143
Merdinoglu D, Butterlin G, Bevilacqua L, Chiquet V, Adam-Blondon AF, Decroocq S (2005) Development and characterization of a large set of microsatellite markers in grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) suitable for multiplex PCR. Mol Breed 15:349–366
Pugh T, Fouet O, Risterucci AM, Brottier P, Abouladze M, Deletrez C, Courtois B, Clement D, Larmande P, N’Goran JA, Lanaud C (2004) A new cacao linkage map based on codominant markers: development and integration of 201 new microsatellite markers. Theor Appl Genet 108:1151–1161
Saunders JA, Mischke S, Leamy EA, Hemeida AA (2004) Selection of international molecular standards for DNA fingerprint of Theobroma cacao. Theor Appl Genet 110:41–47
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the funding from the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) and the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) through project CFC/ICCO/BIOMOL/FUNPAB and the collaboration of Valéria Marques, Verônica S. Lima and Vanessa F. Leite.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Araújo, I.S., Intorne, A.C., Pereira, M.G. et al. Development and characterization of novel tetra-, tri- and di-nucleotide microsatellite markers in cacao (Theobroma cacao L.). Mol Breeding 20, 73–81 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-006-9057-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-006-9057-7