ARS | Publication request: EVALUATION OF AFLPS AS TAGS FOR THE MS LOCUS IN ONION

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: April 18, 1996
Publication Date: N/A

Technical Abstract: The production of hybrid-onion seed is dependent on cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) systems. The male-sterile line is seed propagated using a normal (N) cytoplasmic maintainer line homozygous recessive at the nuclear male-fertility restoration locus (MS). Because of onion's biennial generation time, four to eight years are required to establish the genotype at the MS locus. The development of maintainer lines would greatly benefit from a genetic marker linked to the MS locus. Such a marker would allow breeders to establish the nuclear genotype in seedlings and flower only those plants that are maintainers (N msms) or plants that can be used to develop maintainers (N MSms), reducing the number of plants to be testcrossed or backcrossed to a sterile line. We evaluated restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs), random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPDs), and amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) to tag the chromosome region carrying the MS locus. No RAPDs or RFLPs cosegregated with MS. AFLP markers were identified that phenotypically correlated with restoration of male fertility.