RAPD markers associated to some flowering traits in five mango (mangifera indica l.) cultivars

Abstract

Five mango cultivars (Alphonse, Ewais, Hindi khassa, Keitt and Zebda) were used in this study during two successive seasons at the Horticulture Research Station in El-Kanater El-Kheireia, aiming to find a relationships between genotypes and some flowering traits of mango i.e. beginning of flowering, length of panicle and sex ratio. RAPD-PCR (polymerase chain reaction randomly amplified polymorphic DNA) analysis was performed to assess the genetic variation in flowering traits between them. The obtained results showed that, the beginning of blooming date was earliest in c.v. Hindi khassa followed by Alphonse and Ewais cultivars. In Keitt and Zebda cultivars, blooming started at the latest. Zebda c.v. had the least length of panicle compared to the other four cultivars which recorded the highest length of panicles. On the other hand, there were no significant differences among studied cultivars in the average number of branches per panicle in the first season. The cultivars differed significantly in the average number of total flowers per panicle; Alphonse c.v. recorded the highest value meanwhile the lowest value was found in Zebda c.v. during the two seasons of study. Keitt c.v. resulting in better sex ratio. For PCR-RAPD analysis, 12 arbitrary (10-mer) primers were used. A total of161 polymorphic bands were detected for12 primers (10-mer) RAPD analysis. Dendrogram tree generated across RAPD analysis demonstrated that the highest similarity was scored between Alphonse and Ewais (77.1%), while the lowest was scored between Keitt and Hindi khassa cultivars (28.1%). Some RAPD markers may be linked to some flowering traits such as beginning of blooming (C11-1952), length of panicle (B3-270) and sex ratio (C6-810).