Author(s)

Festus Olakunle Olasupo^1,2*, Christopher Olumuyiwa Ilori¹, Esther Adekemi Stanley³, Temitope Esther Owoeye^3,4, David Okeh Igwe^5,6

¹Department of Crop Protection and Environmental Biology, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
²Plant Breeding Section, Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, Ibadan, Nigeria.
³Bioscience Centre, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria.
⁴Department of Genomics and Bioinformatics, BIODEC, National Biotechnology Development Agency, Abuja, Nigeria.
⁵Department of Biotechnology, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria.
⁶Department of Natural Sciences, Bowie State University, Bowie, MD, USA.

Genetic diversity evaluation of mutant lines is essential to facilitate their conservation and utility in breeding programs. Characterization of plant genotypes using morphological markers has limitations which make the procedure inefficient. Application of molecular tools for characterization and diversity assessment has been found useful to complement phenotypic evaluation of plant population. Therefore genetic diversity of some cowpea mutant lines was studied using simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. DNA barcoding marker, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase(rbcL) of the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) was also used for characterization and identification of the mutants to species level. The mean polymorphic information content (0.51) obtained from the microsatellites showed high polymorphism in accessing wide genetic diversity among the mutants and their parents. Dendrogram generated revealed 8 groups with most mutants clustered separately from their parents. Sequence analysis revealed insertions/deletions (InDels) and base substitutions as the two main classes of mutations induced in the plastid DNA of the mutants studied. The nucleotide frequencies were 26.95% (A), 34.43% (T), 24.09% (C) and 14.53% (G). A total of 61.38% AT rich region was identified, while GC rich region was found to be 38.62%. Highest rate of mutations were observed in region 3 - 4 indicating that the region is less conserved in cowpea rbcL gene. The present study proved that SSR markers are useful for the genetic diversity assessment of cowpea mutants. It also proved the efficiency of rbcL markers in mutants’ identification. The results indicate that the mutants are valuable genetic resources that have been developed to widen cowpea genetic base.

Cowpea Mutants, Genetic Diversity, rbcL Gene, Sequence Analysis, InDels, Point Mutation

Olasupo, F. , Ilori, C. , Stanley, E. , Owoeye, T. and Igwe, D. (2018) Genetic Analysis of Selected Mutants of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp) Using Simple Sequence Repeat and rcbL Markers. American Journal of Plant Sciences, 9, 2728-2756. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2018.913199.