Premise of the study: We developed nuclear microsatellite primers to explore the genetic diversity, population genetic structure, and evolutionary history of the fonio (Digitaria exilis), an understudied cereal cultivated in West Africa.
Methods and results: We used a microsatellite-enriched library approach to isolate and characterize 38 nuclear primer pairs (31 di-, five tri-, and two tetranucleotide repeats), of which 21 were polymorphic and exhibited a clear pattern in 36 accessions from West Africa. The number of alleles per locus ranged from two to 22, with a mean of 4.71, and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.03 to 0.93.
Conclusions: The developed set of 21 polymorphic SSR markers will provide tools for population and evolutionary genetics studies of the cultivated fonio.