Development of microsatellite markers in fig (Ficus carica L.)

The fig germplasm collection of Badajoz (Spain) established in 1985 contains 215 accessions obtained from different geographical areas. To improve the management of germplasm collections we started the process of finding microsatellites or SSRs in this species. We report here the results obtained with 8 primer pairs of microsatellites obtained from a CT-enriched genomic library of the Spanish fig cultivar Cuello de Dama Blanco. The SSRs obtained were evaluated with an automatic sequencer in a set of 15 fig cultivars coming from different countries such as USA, France, Israel, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 4 with a mean value of 2.75. Moreover, cross-species amplification was tested with 14 Ficus and 2 Morus species. Five of the microsatellite primer pairs produced amplification fragments with all the Ficus species and all of them with Morus alba.