Transferability of sequence tagged microsatellite sites (STMS) primers to pulse yielding taxa belonging to Phaseolae

The transferability of genome specific sequence tagged microsatellite sites (STMS) primers from V. unguiculata (cowpea), V. radiata (mung bean) and V. angularis (adzuki bean) to all major pulse yielding taxa belonging to tribe Phaseolae was examined. The adzuki bean derived primers amplified microsatellites from majority of accessions analyzed in this study; whereas mung bean and cowpea derived primer pairs amplified relatively few sequences. The highest level of successful amplification obtained with a single primer was 100% for adzuki bean primer (AB128069), 94.12% for mung bean primer (MB122a) and 76.47% for cowpea primer (VM27). The potential transferability of STMS primers to amplify across species, expressed as total mean percentage of successful amplification, was 20.47% for cowpea STMS primers, 47.18% for mung bean STMS primers and 91.18% for adzuki bean STMS primers. The transferability of these STMS primers indicates a high level of sequence conservation in the SSRs flanking regions across species. Together with their locus specificity, codominant character and potential to amplify the multiple alleles, their transferability makes STMS markers a powerful tool for genetic mapping, diversity analysis and genotyping.