Transferability of Rice SSR Marker in Wheat (Triticum aestivum)

Simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers are short, tandem repeat DNA sequences of few base pairs (1–6 bp). They provide high level of polymorphism and information in crop genomic research. Development of SSR markers is extremely expensive and time consuming because of the requirement of prior sequence knowledge for design of locus specific primers. Transferability of 25 rice microsatellites was studied using six wheat cultivars. 60% of the primers were found to amplify in wheat. Primers RM 351 RM 217, RM 341, RM 3589, RM 188, RM 179, RM 108, RM 239, RM 224 and RM 177 could produce multiple alleles in all the varieties of wheat whereas; RM 212, RM 209, RM 269 and RM 5863 produced single alleles. Therefore microsatellite markers developed for one species could be very valuable in related species.