A caps marker linked to a genic male-sterile gene in the colored sweet pepper, 'paprika' (Capsicum annuum L.)

Genic male sterility (GMS) has been widely used as a tool for hybrid seed production in chili pepper (Capsicum annuum L.). Little work has been done on the development of molecular markers linked to pepper GMS genes, which are generally controlled by a recessive nuclear gene. In this study, we developed a DNA marker linked to paprika GMS using bulked segregant analysis (BSA) and an amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technique. Two F₂ populations were made by selfing commercial F1 varieties of 'Mirage' and 'Fiesta' and subjected to BSA-AFLP using 256 primer combinations. Among five reproducible polymorphic primer combinations, an AFLP marker Egat/Mcgg was converted to a codominant cleavage amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) marker. This marker, named PmsM1-CAPS, is located about 2 to 3 cM from the ms locus. Although PmsM1-CAPS was not correlated with GMS in 'MiniBell' because it was a different GMS gene, the marker was found to be useful in screening for male sterility, as tested in F2 progenies from 'Helsinki' and F₃ families derived from the F₁ varieties used in this study.