Validation of Gender Specific CAPS Marker in Turkish Fig (Ficus carica L.) Collection and F1 Progenies

In most dioecious plants, distinguishing male and female progenies is not possible until flowering or fruiting stage. The fig (Ficus carica L.) is such a plant where distinguishing male and female plants at the seedling stage can accelerate fig-breeding programs. An orthologue of RAN1 loci was reported to be associated with sex determination in fig (Mori et al., 2017). The objective of this study is to validate this locus on Turkish fig germplasm collection and F1 population obtained from a cross between female genotypes ‘Bursa Siyahi’ and male genotype ‘Ak Ilek’. A total of 144 genotypes from germplasm collection and 115 F1 individuals were tested with CAPS (cleaved amplified polymorphic sequences) marker following the Mori et al. (2017). The loci produced a 315bp amplification product from all genotypes. PciI digestion of PCR products resulted in 100% concordance between phenotypes and molecular tests. On the other hand, HpyCH4IV enzyme digestion of 8 female genotypes resulted in false negatives among the tested materials. Therefore, despite overall results show that the locus is suitable for gender selection of plants at the seedling stage in the breeding programs, care should be taken when HpyCH4IV enzyme is to be employed for CAPS assay.