Generation of a Saturated Genetic Recombination Map for Avocado (Persea americana)

Two large mapping populations of avocado consisting of 1582 trees were genotyped with 5050 SNP markers from transcribed genes using an Illumina Infinium SNP chip.  A Florida mapping population consisted of 527 progeny from 'Tonnage' x 'Simmonds' and 249 from 'Simmonds' x 'Tonnage'.  A California mapping population consisted of 576 progeny from 'Hass' x 'Bacon' and 230 progeny from 'Bacon' x 'Hass'.  Microsatellite marker data from the Florida mapping populations that had been used to produce a moderately resolved genetic recombination map (Borrone et al. 2009) were included with the SNP data to anchor the new maps to the old.  Individual maps were created for each population and joined using JoinMap4.1.  The same twelve linkage groups identified in the previous map (Borrone et al. 2009) were found.  The genetic map for avocado has been significantly expanded.  The expanded, saturated map will be useful for the assembly of the avocado genome. 

Borrone JW, Brown JS, Tondo CL, Mauro-Herrera M, Kuhn DN, Violi HA, Sautter RT, Schnell RJ (2009) An EST-SSR-based linkage map for Persea americana Mill. (avocado). Tree Genet Genomes 5 (4):553-560. doi:10.1007/s11295-009-0208-y