Marker-Assisted Selection Of Non-Restoring Allele Against Owen Cytoplasmic Male Sterility

To develop marker assisted selection (MAS) method, we investigated genetic variation at the Rf1 locus (Matsuhira et al. 2012), one of the two Rf loci known in sugar beet. After digestion with HindIII, DNAs from beet plants known to have a restoring Rf1 allele yielded a range of hybridization patterns on agarose gels, indicating that Rf1 is a multiallelic locus. However, 22 of 23 maintainer lines showed the same hybridization pattern. The sequences of the rf1 coding regions of these 22 maintainer lines were found to be identical, confirming that they shared the same rf1 allele (Moritani et al, submitted). Two PCR markers targeting a downstream intergenic sequence and the first intron of Rf1, respectively, were developed. The electrophoretic patterns of both markers showed multiple Rf1 alleles. One of these alleles, named the dd(L) type, was associated with the maintainer genotype.