Identification of Putative Molecular Markers Associated with Nut Weight and Kernel Weight and Four Growth Traits in Cashew

Aim: To identify putative molecular markers linked to some useful traits in cashew using SSR markers in the F1 population.

Place and Duration of the Study: Study conducted at ICAR-Directorate of Cashew Research, Puttur, Karnataka, India during 2013-17.

Methodology: Population for the study comprised of 83 F1 plants developed through crossing tall variety Ullal-3 as female parent with dwarf accession NRC-492 as male parent which was planted in the field at 6m x 6m spacing during the year 2009. It was phenotyped along with parents during the year 2017 for the 13 growth and yield related traits and genotyped using 32 polymorphic SSR markers from cashew, almond, pistachio and mango. Single marker analysis was deployed to identify the markers linked to traits by SPSS software.

Results: results revealed three markers such as AL 29, IM 31 and IM 28 to be significantly associated with some traits. Marker AL 29 from Almond species was linked to traits stem girth, nut weight and kernel weight with an explained phenotypic variance of 7.9%, 5.6% and 5.4%, respectively. Marker IM 31 from mango species was associated with stem girth, kernel weight, tree height, mean tree spread, nut weight and presented phenotypic variance of 17.6%, 5.7%, 8.2%, 4.5, 4.2% in that order. While the marker IM 28 from mango species showed linked with stem girth and intermodal length with phenotypic variance of 7.6%, 7.5%, 10.4% correspondingly.

Conclusion: The present study has identified three markers AL 29 (from Almond) , IM 28 and IM 31 (from Mango) linked to six traits viz., stem girth, tree height, mean tree spread, intermodal length, nut weight and kernel weight with the limited polymorphic markers using Single Marker Analysis. However, further studies are aimed to validate the linked markers prior to using them in marker assisted selection in cashew.