Marker-Trait Association for Fruit Characters in Mango ( Mangifera indica L.) Cultivars

In the present study, putative marker-trait associations were identified within a core collection of mango cultivars by simple-sequence-repeat marker based association study. A panel of 48 mango varieties which represented the core collection of the South-West region of India, were characterized at the molecular level using 31 simple sequence repeat markers. Morphological characterization included important fruit characteristics viz., fruit weight, total soluble solids (TSS), pulp content and acidity. The study on population structure revealed two sub-groups in the core collection. Association analysis, computed by General Linear Model (GLM), using TASSEL resulted in the identification of seven markers being associated with the trait titrable acidity where as one marker each of the traits fruit weight and TSS. These traitspecific markers were highly significant at p<0.05 and explained a good amount of phenotypic variation by exhibiting substantial R2 values ranging from 0.71 to 0.86 for acidity, 0.61 for TSS and 0.59 for fruit weight. This is the first report on marker-trait associations (MTA) in mango.