The development of faba bean expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeats (EST-SSRs) and their validity in diversity analysis

With 2 figures and 3 tables Expressed sequence tag–simple sequence repeats (EST‐SSRs) are gene‐derived SSR markers that are developed using special software to mine complementary DNA (cDNA) clone and EST databases. Three hundred and forty‐nine SSR‐containing ESTs were identified after mining 5031 faba bean EST sequences that correspond to approximately 2.14 Mb. A total of 117 non‐redundant SSR‐containing ESTs were identified, and 34 primer pairs were designed and used to amplify 20 Jordanian accessions: 13 Vicia faba and seven Vicia species. Thirty‐one primers were successfully amplified. The average polymorphic information content (PIC) value of 0.54 indicated the presence of high polymorphic loci, which were able to discriminate within V. faba and among Vicia species using the unweighted pair‐group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrogram. The transferability rates of markers ranged from a high of 80.6% in Vicia sativa to a low of 48.4% in Vicia hybrida with an average interspecies transferability of 65.9%. The present study was the first detailed effort to develop and validate a large number of potential SSRs for functional coding sequences in V. faba and related species.