Promkaew Nuttapol, Umpunjun Puangpaka, Chuenboonngarm Ngarmnij, Viboonjun Unchera
Department of Plant Science, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand.
Plant Biotechnol (Tokyo). 2024 Mar 25;41(1):45-51. doi: 10.5511/plantbiotechnology.23.1214b.
Date palm ( L.) is a dioecious plant, with male and female plants having distinct characteristics. Female plants are responsible for fruit production, and only approximately 10% of male plants are necessary for effective pollination. The determination of plant sex occurs during the first flowering, a process that typically spans 3-7 years. However, this extended timeframe results in significant time and valuable plantation resources being expended in the maintenance of trees. To address this issue, the study focused on sex identification of date palms using DNA markers. The research aimed to develop sex-specific markers for certain date palm cultivars, employing the high annealing temperature random amplified polymorphic DNA (HAT-RAPD) technique for accurate and reliable sex identification. In this investigation, 45 RAPD primers underwent screening in both male and female date palm plants to pinpoint sex-specific markers. Out of the total primers tested, only one, OPW-18, exhibited a correlation with sex. OPW-18 produced a distinct band of approximately 400 bp, consistently present in all male plants but absent in all female plants. The male-specific fragment from OPW-18 was cloned and sequenced to facilitate the development of sex-specific sequence-characterized amplified region (SCAR) primers. The outcomes revealed that the newly crafted SCAR primer pair, mspW18-2F and mspW18-2R, successfully amplified a unique fragment of 283 bp exclusively in male plants. This capability allowed the identification of 100% of male plants in the KL1 and Barhi cultivars. These markers prove to be efficient, reliable, and reproducible for early-stage sex identification in plants.
海枣（Phoenix dactylifera L.）是一种雌雄异株的植物，雄株和雌株具有明显的特征。雌株负责结果，而有效的授粉仅需要约10%的雄株。植株性别的确定发生在首次开花时，这个过程通常持续3至7年。然而，这种较长的时间框架导致在树木养护方面耗费了大量的时间和宝贵的种植园资源。为了解决这个问题，该研究聚焦于利用DNA标记对海枣进行性别鉴定。这项研究旨在为某些海枣品种开发性别特异性标记，采用高退火温度随机扩增多态性DNA（HAT-RAPD）技术进行准确可靠的性别鉴定。在这项调查中，对45个RAPD引物在海枣雄株和雌株中进行筛选，以确定性别特异性标记。在所有测试的引物中，只有一个引物OPW-18与性别相关。OPW-18产生了一条约400 bp的独特条带，在所有雄株中始终存在，而在所有雌株中均不存在。对来自OPW-18的雄性特异性片段进行克隆和测序，以促进性别特异性序列特征扩增区域（SCAR）引物的开发。结果显示，新设计的SCAR引物对mspW18-2F和mspW18-2R成功地仅在雄株中扩增出一个283 bp的独特片段。这一能力使得能够在KL1和Barhi品种中100%地鉴定出雄株。这些标记被证明对于植物早期性别鉴定是高效、可靠且可重复的。
