RESEARCH ARTICLE

Journal of Oil Palm Research Vol. 25 (3) December 2013, p. 305-313

REPRESENTATIONAL DIFFERENCE ANALYSIS (RDA) FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF DNA MARKERS ASSOCIATED WITH TISSUE CULTURE AMENITY IN OIL PALM

NORASHIKIN SARPAN*; SIEW-ENG OOI*; MEILINA ONG-ABDULLAH*; CHAI-LING HO**; CHIEW-FOAN CHIN‡ AND PARAMESWARI NAMASIVAYAM**

ABSTRACT

Tissue culture is a promising technology for mass propagation of high yielding oil palm. However, the large scale production of clonal palm is still not optimal. The application of DNA marker for early diagnosis of high quality ortets (selected oil palm tree for cloning) would greatly help in reducing the production cost. Representational difference analysis (RDA) was used to identify genomic differences between the oil palm explant tissues of the same genotypes but producing different somatic embryogenesis rates in culture. The putative RDA products isolated were cloned, sequenced and verified. Among the products isolated, C1-20 and C14-19 from forward and reverse RDA respectively, possess a single nucleotide change when aligned with the equivalent DNA region of the subtracted tissues. However, further verification is needed to confirm the discriminating effects of these products on the fecundity of the selected ortets.

KEYWORDS:


* Malaysian Palm Oil Board, 6 Persiaran Institusi, Bandar Baru
Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia.

** Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Faculty of
Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra
Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.

E-mail: parameswari@upm.edu.my

‡ School of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, University of
Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih,
Selangor, Malaysia.