Characterization of strawberry (fragaria ananassa) by genotyping and phenotyping

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Strawberry is an important fruit crop for its nutritional value and is known to have a higher amount of antioxidants. Consuming strawberries can increase dietary antioxidants. Antioxidants in strawberry can act against cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and other health issues. Recently, use of molecular markers is becoming popular in strawberry breeding programs as well as in genotyping of existing varieties. Genotyping is the process of determining genetic differences among individual plants and can be readily applied to identify genetic diversity among the germplasm. Simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers present in every living organism. Majority of the SSR markers are used for genotyping includes cultivar identification, genetic diversity analysis, taxonomic analysis, marker-assisted breeding, and cloning. It is easier to identify a trait of interest in any genotype if known SSR markers are available. Cultivated strawberries have a wide range of SSR markers available which permits to detect polymorphism of closely related genotypes as the genome of strawberries has been sequenced. In this study, we genotyped thirty-three strawberry accessions utilizing thirty-five SSR markers and phenotyped by observing leaf total antioxidant (TA) content, leaf shape, leaf trichome density and petiole size. DNA extraction, PCR, and SSR analysis were done for genotyping. We identified two distinct genetic groups from those genotypes, one group is alpine (wild or woody) type strawberry and another group is the cultivated type. In this study, we identified 120 alleles with an average of 3.43 alleles per locus. The genetic polymorphism ranged from 0.1461 for the marker ARSFL_9 to 1.6635 for the marker FG1a/b. All thirty-three accessions were grouped into clusters based on the genetic diversity analysis and found that grouping them into three clusters was provided the maximum genetic diversity. The cluster three contained more diverse genotypes among those. Leaf total antioxidant content was measured in Trolox equivalent amounts by colorimetric assays. The highest antioxidant containing genotypes were Earliglow, Wendy, Elan hybrid, Clancy, and Record. Spectrophotometer and high-resolution camera were used for phenotyping. We classified all genotypes into five groups according to the leaf shape and three groups according to the leaf trichome density and leaf petiole size. From the association, the two genotypes named Clancy and Elan hybrid contained more total antioxidant content with high trichome density. Strawberry breeding programs can utilize information from this research during cultivar development and authentication of genotypes.

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