Molecular Markers in Date Palm

Abstract

Molecular markers are an increasingly important resource for all crops. DNA markers, especially those based on simple sequence repeats and single nucleotide polymorphisms, are playing an increasingly important role in plant variety identification, germplasm resource collection and breeding activities. The major types of DNA markers are described and the resources available to the date palm community are identified. In general, the molecular marker resources for date palm are somewhat limited. However, most of the available DNA marker types have been used on some material, mostly to cluster date palm varieties into related groups. The most profound effect on the development of the DNA marker resources for date palm is the newly available shotgun sequence. Mining this sequence database and the steady lowering of the costs of high throughput sequencing will increase rapidly the molecular marker resources and their application to date palm over the next few years.