DEVELOPMENT AND CHARACTERIZATION OF 21 EST-DERIVED MICROSATELLITE MARKERS IN VICIA FABA (FAVA BEAN)

Premise of the study: Expressed sequence tag (EST)-derived microsatellite simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were developed in Vicia faba L. by screening the NCBI database. Markers were validated and explored for size polymorphism among fava bean accessions. Methods and Results: Twenty-one EST-SSR primer pairs were identified, and the loci characterized were size polymorphic among 32 fava bean genotypes from diverse geographical locations. The number of alleles (N-alpha) per locus ranged from 2 to 9, and expected heterozygosity (H-E) ranged from 0.0476 to 0.8304, respectively. Conclusions: These markers will be useful to study genetic diversity, genetic mapping, and molecular breeding in fava bean.