A set of 109 microsatellite primer pairs recently
developed for peach and cherry have been studied in
the almond × peach F2 progeny previously used to construct
a saturated Prunus map containing mainly restriction
fragment length polymorphism markers. All but one
gave amplification products, and 87 (80%) segregated in
the progeny and detected 96 loci. The resulting Prunus
map contains a total of 342 markers covering a total distance
of 522 cM. The approximate position of nine additional
simple sequence repeats (SSRs) was established by
comparison with other almond and peach maps. SSRs
were placed in all the eight linkage groups of this map,
and their distribution was relatively even, providing a genome-
wide coverage with an average density of
5.4 cM/SSR. Twenty-four single-locus SSRs, highly
polymorphic in peach, and each falling within 24 evenly
spaced approximately 25-cM regions covering the whole
Prunus genome, are proposed as a ‘genotyping set’ useful
as a reference for fingerprinting, pedigree and genetic
analysis of this species.
