Single nucleotide polymorphisms, indels, and simple sequence repeats for onion cultivar identification

The commercial production of onion (Allium cepa L.) inbreds, hybrids, and open-pollinated (OP) cultivars would benefit from a robust set of molecular markers that confidently distinguish among elite germplasms. Large-scale DNA sequencing has revealed that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), short insertion-deletion (indel) events, and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are relatively abundant classes of codominant DNA markers. We identified 398 SNPs, indels, and SSRs among 35 elite onion ulations and observed that all populations could be distinguished. Phylogenetic analyses of simple-matching and Jaccard's coefficients for SSRs produced essentially identical trees and relationships were consistent with known pedigrees and previous marker evaluations. The SSRs revealed that elite germplasms from specific companies or breeding programs were often closely related. In contrast, phylogenetic analyses of SNPs and indels did not reveal clear relationships among elite onion populations and there was no agreement among trees generated using SNPs and indels vs. SSRs. This discrepancy was likely due to SNPs and indels occurring among amplicons from duplicated regions (paralogs) of the onion genome. Nevertheless, these PCR-based markers will be useful in the quality control of inbred, hybrid, and OP onion seed lots.