CR UK manager: M. Gilmour
There are currently many morphological and disease resistance traits which can be used to characterise cocoa accessions but these are subject to environmental and physiological influences. Also descriptors of this kind only afford limited information of the relatedness of accessions. Increasingly therefore, interest has focused on the use of molecular marker techniques. Such genetic markers are believed to be unaffected by external parameters and also provide a measure of genetic relatedness.
The research aims to develop PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) based methods using inter-SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) to create a set of specific primer pairs capable of producing reproducible, easily scored banding profiles for cocoa germplasm. The primer pairs will be used to create sufficient markers for the localisation of genes of interest by applying them to large genetically diverse cocoa populations.
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