Effects of drought on Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn. (finger millet) and identification of microsatellite markers
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Abstract
Finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.) is a crop with high nutritional profile cultivated mainly in developing countries. It is an allotetraploid (2n= 4x= 36 chromosomes), that belongs to the Poaceae family and has a genome size of 2509 Mbp. Drought is one amongst other abiotic stresses limiting a plant’s growth and productivity. In order to better understand the physiological responses of finger millet to drought, 12 parameters were studied by subjecting plants to water withholding at 26 DAS and imparting water stress for 6 days. Analyzing control plants in parallel indicated that IE 7079 was the most sensitive accession and IE 5091 was the most tolerant accession to water withholding. 83 accessions of finger millet obtained from ICRISAT was genotyped using 31 polymorphic simple sequence repeats (SSRs) identified from transcript assemblies. A total of 152 alleles were generated by these 31 SSRs, with a mean of 4.9 alleles per locus and mean polymorphism information content (PIC) of 0.49 Cluster analysis of these accessions showed considerable genetic variation in the varieties from different geographical origins. Identified polymorphic SSRs can be used to further expand the linkage map of finger millet.