Plant & Animal Genomes XVI Conference

January 12-16, 2008
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Development Of Gene-Based Markers For Linkage Map Construction And QTL Analysis In Sweet Cherry (Prunus avium L.)

Antonio Cabrera¹ , Alex Kozik² , Suneth S. Sooriyapathirana³ , Audrey Sebolt³ , Susan Hammar³ , James W. Olmstead⁴ , Gloria Iriarte¹ , Dechun Wang⁵ , Guorong Zhang⁵ , Esther van der Knaap¹ , Amy F. Iezzoni³

¹  Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, The Ohio State University, Wooster, OH 44691

²  Genome and Biomedical Sciences Facility, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA 95616

³  Department of Horticulture, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824

⁴  Department of Horticulture, Washington State University, Prosser, WA 99350

⁵  Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824

Linkage maps of the sweet cherry cultivar ‘Emperor Francis’ (EF) and the wild forest cherry ‘New York 54’ (NY) were constructed using primarily simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers from other Prunus linkage maps. However, as only 26% of the SSR markers could be placed on the EF or NY maps, we initiated an effort to develop gene-based markers for cherry using 170 previously mapped Prunus ESTs. From these ESTs and 2 sequences of poplar homologous to the tomato FW2.2 gene, we developed 27 CAP, dCAP and In/Del markers of which 25 were placed on the EF and NY linkage maps. Fruit size was evaluated from the EF × NY progeny in 2006 and 2007 and QTLs were identified on linkage groups two and six. The significant regions for both QTLs contained at least one of the newly derived EST-based markers. Because of our continuing need for more markers not only in cherry, but for comparative mapping within the Rosaceae, we initiated the development of Conserved Ortholgous Set (COS) markers. From a total of 91,000 Prunus ESTs, 4,852 putative COS were pre-selected after BLAST search against Arabidopsis single copy genes. The assembly of the Prunus COS candidates resulted in 1,758 Prunus COS of which 1,374 corresponded to Arabidopsis COS. These 1,374 Prunus-Arabidopsis COS will form the basis of our future gene-based marker development for comparative mapping within the Rosaceae.