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Molecular Diversity in some Ghanaian Cowpea [Vigna unguiculata L. (Walp)] Accessions

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Abstract

Cowpea [Vigna unguiculata L. (Walp)] is grown mainly for its protein-rich grains and is consumed in various forms in sub-Saharan Africa. Average grain yield in farmers’ fields is generally low due to a number of biotic and abiotic stresses. One hundred and six cowpea accessions from Ghana, which had previously been evaluated for seedling drought tolerance, were used for this study. This paper attempts to use three multi-locus PCR-based molecular markers; simple sequence repeats (SSR), inter-retrotransposon amplified polymorphism (IRAP) and retrotransposon-microsatellite amplified polymorphisms (REMAP), to analyse genetic diversity in the cowpea accessions. Analysis of the polymorphic bands data indicated that 101 alleles were amplified among 121 cowpea genotypes (83.4%) from 16 SSR primer pairs out of a total of 30 SSR primer pairs. Likewisely, a total of 66 (54.5%) polymorphic bands were obtained from IRAP and a total of 114 (94.2%) highly polymorphic bands obtained from REMAP analysis. The outcome indicated the highly polymorphic nature of the DNA markers, as small groups of these molecular markers were found to be able to identify each of the accessions used. Microsatellite markers (SSRs) and retrotransposon-based markers, like IRAP and REMAP, were found to be highly polymorphic and informative, suggesting that genomic fingerprinting has a major role in characterizing populations.

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Abbreviations

IRAP:

Inter-retrotransposon amplified polymorphism and

REMAP:

Retrotransposon-microsatellite amplified polymorphisms

SSR:

Simple Sequence Repeats

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

    Emmanuel Plas Otwe, Daniel S. Agyirifo & Isaac K. Galyuon

  2. Department of Biology, Adrian Building, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK

    John S Heslop-Harrison

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  1. Emmanuel Plas Otwe
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  2. Daniel S. Agyirifo
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  3. Isaac K. Galyuon
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  4. John S Heslop-Harrison
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Correspondence to Emmanuel Plas Otwe.

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Communicated by: Yuval Cohen

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Otwe, E.P., Agyirifo, D.S., Galyuon, I.K. et al. Molecular Diversity in some Ghanaian Cowpea [Vigna unguiculata L. (Walp)] Accessions. Tropical Plant Biol. 10, 57–67 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12042-017-9184-9

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