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.