Genome-Wide Linkage Search for Mesocarp Oil Content of an Introgressed Deli Dura Family of Oil Palm

Chee Keng, Teh, Sime Darby R&D Centre

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) as a perennial species belonging to Arecaceae family is the most productive and major edible oil source in the world since year 2003. The booming of oil palm plantation, especially in South-east Asia, Latin America and Africa is mainly catalyzed by the superiority of oil yield per hectare of planted trees, which is almost 10 times higher than that of soybean (Glycine max). Oil yield improvement through breeding and selection has been initiated since the first establishment of the commercial planting in the 1920s and 1930s. However, the progress has been extremely slow due to long generation and selection cycles, typically taking up to 12 years per cycle. Marker-assisted selection (MAS) is widely recognized to break the biological restrictions in oil palm and other perennial crops. In order to achieve this, Sime Darby constructed SSR-based genetic maps representing different breeding populations to understand the underlying quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for oil yield components. In this study, the main QTLs for oil-to-dry mesocarp (ODM) which reflects the mesocarp oil content per palm, was successfully localized at linkage group (LG) 12 of a SSR-based linkage map derived from an introgressed Deli dura (advanced) x Nigerian dura (semi-developed) population. The SNPs residing throughout the QTL regions were subsequently called to improve the mapping resolution. That study demonstrates that the linkage mapping approach can be used to dissect the QTL influences on oil yield components in oil palm.