Sequence tagged microsatellite site (STMS) markers in the Musaceae

• Published in: Molecular ecology Vol. 7; no. 5; pp. 657 - 666
• Main Authors: Lagoda, PJL, Noyer, J-L, Dambier, D, Baurens, F-C, Grapin, A, Lanaud, C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-05-1998
• ISSN: 0962-1083

Musaceae belong to the major basic food-producing plants on earth. Dessert bananas are intensively cultivated for export to Europe and North America, while cooking bananas and some dessert bananas are cultivated, most often in backyard gardens, for local consumption in tropical countries. Bananas are among the tallest monocotyledons. Clones from the genus Ensete (basic chromosome number n = 9; seven to eight species) are cultivated as vegetables and for fibre. The genus Musa is ordered into different sections. Section Australimusa (n = 10, five to six species; fruit and fibre), section Callimusa (n = 10, five to six species; ornamental) and section Rhodochlamys (n = 11, five to six species; ornamental) are of secondary importance compared to section Eumusa (n = 11, 9-10 species; fruit, vegetable, fibre) containing the principal crop-producing cultivars of banana and plantain. Main dessert banana cultivars are polyploid hybrids of two species: Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. Highly sterile, parthenocarpic and clonally propagated, they are typically crops to which molecular breeding is compulsory. As molecular markers can be used at early stages of plant development, they greatly facilitate the selection of parents and assist in the development of new improvement strategies based on marker-assisted breeding. Particularly within cultivated plants, profiling of individual genotypes can assist in gene mapping, variety identification and discrimination between plant species. The ability to distinguish or identify one individual or group of individuals from another has applications in many fields: the same methods of fingerprinting can be used to identify and evaluate low levels of variation which are induced by in vitro manipulation, to study the amount of variation in the germplasm of crop plants, and to make comparisons between different accessions or groups of accessions within collections to assist in the management and future use of the conserved material. In this context, sequence tagged microsatellite site (STMS) markers for Musa have been developed.