Short note: Development, characterization and cross-amplification of eight EST-derived microsatellites in Salix

A set of eight simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were developed from 707 Salix expressed sequence tags (ESTs) deposited in GenBank. Each of the EST-SSR amplicons was identical to the original EST, with sequence identity 60.90-96.03% and presence of the expected repeat motifs. Of the eight EST-SSR loci, five were polymorphic among 14 individuals of S. eriocephala, with the number of alleles per locus (Na), observed heterozygosity (H_o), expected heterozygosity (He) and polymorphic information content (PIC) being 2-7 (mean 4.8), 0.29-0.85 (mean 0.65), 0.25-0.84 (mean 0.65) and 0.21-0.78 (mean 0.58), respectively. High rates of crossspecies/ genus amplification were also observed within fourteen different species. The primer sequences for the eight EST-SSRs have been deposited in the Probe database of GenBank (IDs Pr031820546 - Pr031820553). The EST-SSRs developed herein would be a valuable addition of functional markers for genetics and breeding applications in a wide range of Salix species.