Identification and characterization of microsatellite markers in fenugreek: An inter-family amplification

Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) is one of the most important and primitive medicinal plants belonging to family fabaceae and is recognized as one of the most prominent seed spices. Development, identification and classification of entirely new set of SSRs are a very expensive and time consuming process for a crop like fenugreek. Instead, a novel set of SSRs can be achieved with ease in less expense by transferring the microsatellite loci of the related species in fenugreek. SSR's of two major crops, carrot and celery belonging to apiaceae family are available in public domain for cross-species and inter-family investigation. In the present study, we examined transferability of 100 carrot SSR loci in fenugreek of which 19% of SSR's amplified, where 5 primers were monomorphic. 14 SSRs were polymorphic in nature and the bands ranged between 2 to 5. GSSR-87, GSSR-92, GSSR-136 and BSSR-8 showed monomorphic bands and were specific for fenugreek genotypes and can be regarded as a dominant tool for fenugreek breeding and genetic studies. However, GSSR-81 and GSSR-96 were most polymorphic in nature and can be utilized further to distinguish fenugreek from other seed spices. The analysis, revealed optimum level of cross-species transferability (>35.2%) in fenugreek, where no SSR resource is available till date, initiating cross transferability testing from the enriched SSR database of carrot.