Development of Ripening Gene-Specific Markers and their Association with Shelf-Life in Mango ( Mangifera indica L.) varieties

Majority of the popular mango varieties have a very short shelf-life. Therefore, the present investigation was carried out to design functional markers and their association with shelf-life. A total of 35 shelf-life specific primers were designed using in silico mining of 95 ripening gene nucleotide sequences of Mangifera indica L. Of these specific primers, 27 showed polymorphism among the genotypes studied. Gene diversity (GD), average number of alleles per locus (An), polymorphism information content (PIC) and major allele frequency (Maf) observed were 0.38, 2.18, 0.30 and 0.68, respectively. Mango genotypes of varying shelf-life (long, medium and short) grouped separately into different clusters. Strong association of simple sequence repeats loci (SSRs) MSL-8 and MSLC-13 with physiological loss in weight (PLW) and titratable acidity was observed. Therefore, these ripening gene-specific SSRs loci could be used in marker-assisted breeding for fruit quality traits associated with shelf-life.