Journal of Oil Palm Research Vol. 29 (4) December 2017, p. 594-599

SHORT COMMUNICATION: TOWARDS DEVELOPMENT OF Elaeis guineensis CHROMOSOME-ARM SPECIFIC MARKERS AND THEIR UTILITY ACROSS THE Elaeis GENUS

NOORHARIZA MOHD ZAKI*; RAJINDER SINGH*; NORDIANA HANIM MOHD NOR*; MUHAMMAD AZWAN ZULKIFLI*; STEVEN W SMITH**; TRUDE SCHWARZACHERǂ, MADON, M* and HESLOP-HARRISON, J Sǂ

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21894/jopr.2017.0001
ABSTRACT

The development of Elaeis guineensis chromosome-arm specific markers is required for linking the genetic, sequence and chromosomal maps, valuable for comparative studies, hybridisation and breeding. Here, we aimed to develop strategies exploiting assembled short shotgun-sequence reads to identify markers for in situ hybridisation to identify arms and large-scale organisation of pseudo-chromosome 1. The conserved putative repetitive DNA sequence found through informatics analysis showed an extra intercalary band in one arm of pseudo-chromosome 1 in fluorescence the in situ hybridisation result. The results are a basis for establishing a North-South orientation of E. guineensis pseudo-chromosome. Furthermore, the ability of the newly developed markers for distinguishing both Elaeis species with in situ hybridisation showed their utility in identifying Elaeis hybrids.

KEYWORDS:


* Malaysian Palm Oil Board, 6 Persiaran Institusi, Bandar Baru Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia. E-mail: maria@mpob.gov.my

** Orion Genomics, 4041 Forest Park Avenue, Saint Louis, Missouri 63108, USA.

ǂ Department of Genetics, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom.