biologia plantarum

Biologia plantarum 54:539-542, 2010 | DOI: 10.1007/s10535-010-0095-y

Using morphological diagnosis and molecular markers to assess the clonal fidelity of micropropagated Echinacea purpurea regenerants

S. J. Chuang¹, C. L. Chen², J. J. Chen¹, J. M. Sung^3,*

¹ Taiwan Seed Improvement and Propagation Station, Taichung County, Taiwan

² Department of Agronomy, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan

³ Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Hung Kuang University, Taichung County, Taiwan

Both morphological characteristics and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers were used to validate the genetic fidelity of 1 080 field-grown Echinacea purpurea plants regenerated from leaf explants of donor T5-9. Morphological diagnosis revealed that 1 067 out of 1 080 regenerants were normal, while 13 regenerants were aberrant. AFLP analysis was further performed to assess DNA variations among donor, 43 sampled normal regenerants and all 13 aberrant regenerants. Seven primer combinations generated 471 fragments among donor and normal regenerants, of which 9 fragments were polymorphic. The same primer pairs generated 484 fragments for aberrant regenerants, of which 417 fragments were polymorphic. UPGMA clustering indicated that 42 normal regenerants and donor fell into same cluster at similarity scale of > 0.99, while all 13 aberrant regenerants and one morphologically normal regenerant comprised the other clusters. AFLP analysis indicated that these 14 regenerants are off-types.

Keywords: abberant regenerants; dendrogram; polymorphic fragments; somaclonal variation; UPGMA

Subjects: amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP); Echinacea purpurea; ex vitro transfer; UPGMA dengrogram

Received: October 3, 2008; Accepted: April 29, 2009; Published: September 1, 2010  Show citation