Premise of the study: Expressed sequence tag (EST)-derived microsatellite markers in Actinidia arguta were developed for genotyping and genetic mapping.
Methods and results: One hundred and fifty EST-simple sequence repeat (SSR) primer pairs were obtained from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) A. chinensis database using SSR Hunter 1.3. With the other 20 reported primers, 170 primer pairs were screened using 16 samples. A total of 72 primers pairs were successively developed for A. arguta. Fifteen of the developed markers were characterized in A. arguta populations from Changbai Mountain and Daba Mountain. The mean number of alleles per locus in the Changbai and Daba populations was 5.133 and 4.133, respectively.
Conclusions: Development of Actinidia ESTs from the NCBI database is an effective method of obtaining SSR markers for A. arguta. These markers will be useful for genome mapping and molecular breeding in A. arguta.