Characterization of cultivated and wild species of Capsicum using microsatellite markers

Abstract

Diversity of twenty four genotypes of hot pepper representing cultivated species Capsicum annuum, C. frutescens, C. baccatum and C. chinense as well as a wild species C. chacoense was analyzed in the present study using 99 microsatellite loci distributed uniformly throughout the genome. The 85 polymorphic loci, out of 99 simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci used, amplified a total of 192 alleles among the 24 genotypes with one to five allele per loci. The average number of alleles per loci was found to be 2.25. The highest polymorphism information content (PIC value) was observed to be 0.729 for the marker located on linkage group 6. Principal component analysis provided useful information regarding genetic relationship among genotypes as it distributed all the genotypes studied into three major groups each including different species. All the C. annuum genotypes were grouped together while other cultivated species formed a separate group. The C. chacoenese was the only wild species studied which, although, fell within the first group but was placed separately from C. annuum. Besides, all the Chilli leaf curl resistant genotypes were grouped together.