Development and characterisation of microsatellite markers for wild banana (Musa balbisiana)

SummaryThe wild banana species, Musa balbisiana Colla., is one of the progenitors of cultivated banana and belongs to the family Musaceae. M. balbisiana is native to Southeast Asia.The species harbours many useful and important traits such as disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance, and represents an important genetic resource for banana improvement programmes. Thus, the development of microsatellite markers for this species could be of value for use in germplasm conservation, genetic studies, and gene mapping. We report the development of 63 microsatellite (simple sequence repeat; SSR) markers from a microsatellite-enriched library, and have demonstrated their utility in characterising 30 banana accessions belonging to the AA, BB, or AB genome types. The number of alleles detected per locus ranged from two to 21 (mean = 11). The expected heterozygosity (He) ranged from 0.138 – 0.934 (mean = 0.817), and the polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0.131 – 0.912 (mean = 0.771).The total pr...