Short Note: Cross-Species Amplification and Characterization of Pinus Chloroplast Microsatellite Markers in Cedrus deodara Roxb.

The study reports the transferability of chloroplast microsatellite markers developed for Pinus species to Cedrus deodara. A total of 49 primer pairs (both nuclear and chloroplast) of Pinus species were tested in C. deodara out of which 21 chloroplast primers showed positive amplification and 20 were found polymorphic. The primers were screened on 100 adult trees of two natural populations of C. deodara. Using twenty cpSSR primers, a total of 64 variants were found which combined in 70 different haplotypes. The total haplotype diversity in two populations was 0.860 and 0.876 with a mean of 0.868. These sets of markers can further be used for population genetic studies and characterization in C. deodara for which no cpSSR markers have been reported till date.