Characterization of intraspecific hybrid in Clitoria ternatea (L.) using morpho-physiological, cytogenetic, metabolic and molecular markers

Abstract

Clitoria ternatea (L.) is a medicinal plant possessed with bioactive molecules such as taraxerol, delphinidin, kaempoferol and quercetin etc. For the development genotype with higher content of these bioactive molecules, marker-assisted breeding is one of the best strategies and it initiates with the development of F1 hybrids. Thus, an intraspecific F1 hybrid was raised involving two contrasting genotypes of C. ternatea acc. CtB3-SL1 (Blue flowered) and C. ternatea acc. CtW2-BL1 (white flowered). The hybridity of the F1 plant was confirmed by assessing the phenotypic traits, such as colour of the petal, pod shape and seed coat colour, 100 seed weight, and the content of taraxerol and delphinidin. The pollen mother cells in the F1 hybrid showed eight bivalents with preponderance of ring bivalents and 8I:8I segregation at metaphase-I and Anaphase-I, respectively. SDS-PAGE seed albumin and globulin detected three pollen parent-specific polypeptides (Mw 31.62, 22.38 and 18.81KDa), and were inherited to F1 hybrids, which evidenced the hybridity of putative F1 plants. Further, DNA marker analysis also showed the inheritance of 11 RAPD, six SCoT and one ISSR markers to putative F1 plant, which affirmed the hybrid nature of the F1 plant. This study also evidenced that combined use of morphophysiological, cytogenetic, protein and DNA marker analyses could be effective for precise characterization of intra-specific hybrids in C. ternatea. These F1 hybrid and its derived future progenies could also be used for mapping of QTLs or genes contributing higher accumulation of taraxerol and delphinidin in different plant parts.

Keywords

• Hybridity
• Meiosis
• Seed protein profile
• DNA marker
• Taraxerol
• Delphinidin