NEW NON-REDUNDANT MICROSATELLITE AND CAPS-MICROSATELLITE MARKERS FOR COTTON (GOSSYPIUM L.)

Over a decade, researchers have developed microsatellite primer pairs for cotton (Gossypium L.) and most of them have been deposited in the cotton microsatellite database. However, results of the present study clearly indicated that a considerable amount of cotton microsatellite markers were redundant, in some cases, did not contain microsatellite domains and had low level of polymorphisms. In this study, a new set of 144 non-redundant microsatellite primer pairs were developed using expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and tested. Among these primer pairs, seventy were polymorphic while seventy-four were monomorphic. In the present study, suitable restriction enzymes (REs) useful in CAPS-microsatellite analyses were also determined. Results showed that these REs were suitable in the conversion of monomorphic microsatellite markers to polymorphic markers. Non-redundant microsatellite primer pairs and restriction enzymes for CAPS-microsatellite technique could be useful in detecting, manipulating and identifying genes associated with desirable agronomic and quality traits within cotton breeding programs.