Identification of Mutant Heliconia Using DNA Fingerprinting Approach (Heliconia Nickerensis)

Siti Zainab Jantan¹, Muhammad Hanif Azhari Noor¹, Farah Zaidat Mohd Nadzri², Wan Rozita Wan Engah², and Norzihan Abdullah¹

1. Centre for Marker Discovery and Validation (CMDV), Agri-Omics and Bioinformatics Program, Biotechnology and Nanotechnology Research Centre (BN), MARDI Headquarters, Malaysia

2. Fruits Program, Horticulture Research Centre (HR), MARDI Headquarters, Malaysia

Abstract: Ornamental breeding focused on commercial traits such as flower color, longer shelf life, fragrance modification, and plant and flower architectures. Using gamma radiation, the induced mutation technique has been widely used for varietal development in ornamental plants. Induced mutation in ornamental plants helps to increase genetic variability by modifying genetic constituents through deletion (removal of DNA segment), doubling or rearrangement of the chromosomes. This genetic variability can be distinguished by DNA fingerprinting. Molecular markers have been derived to visualize DNA sequence polymorphism. One of the molecular markers that are widely utilized in DNA fingerprinting is the Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) marker. In this study, rhizomes of Heliconia nickerensis were mutated by exposing them to gamma rays at different levels of dosage: 55 Gy, 65 Gy and 75 Gy. The mutants were then screened using 10 SSR markers to detect polymorphism at the genetic level. 0 Gy and Heliconia stricta were also included in this experiment to act as the control and outgroup samples. Out of 10 SSR markers, only 8 SSR markers can amplify the collected samples. A dendrogram was constructed to understand the effective doses of radiation on Heliconia mutation and effect of radiation which resulted in the DNA alterations.

Key words: dendrogram, gamma radiation, mutation, polymorphism, Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) marker