Assessing transferability of Sweetpotato EST SSR primers to cocoyam and micropropagation of nine elite cocoyam varieties in Ghana

摘要

Cocoyam, an important staple crop in Ghana, provides edible leafy vegetable and starchy cormels. Due to difficulty in getting primers for cocoyam, sweetpotato EST SSR primers were used to amplify cocoyam lines. Genomic DNA was isolated from 10 sweetpotato and nine cocoyam cultivars. Ten sweetpotato accessions were screened alongside three cocoyam cultivars, using 22 EST Sweetpotato SSR primers, 13 of which could amplify cocoyam sequences and were subsequentlymsed to screen nine cocoyam cultivars. Thirteen random primers were also used for diversity study. Cocoyam cultivars were established in vitro. Dendogram generated after screening cocoyams alongside sweetpotato, grouped sweetpotato varieties in two main clusters and cocoyam in one cluster. The random primers and the SSRs grouped the cocoyam into two clusters which corresponds with known morphological classification. The method would be used to screen large cocoyam germplasm. Cultivars established in vitro had differences in performance.