Comparison of transcriptome-derived simple sequence repeat (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers for genetic fingerprinting, diversity evaluation, and establishment of relationships in eggplants

Simple sequence repeat (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers are amongst the most common markers of choice for studies of diversity and relationships in horticultural species. We have used 11 SSR and 35 SNP markers derived from transcriptome sequencing projects to fingerprint 48 accessions of a collection of brinjal ( Solanum melongena ), gboma ( S. macrocarpon ) and scarlet ( S. aethiopicum ) eggplant complexes, which also include their respective wild relatives S. incanum , S. dasyphyllum and S. anguivi . All SSR and SNP markers were polymorphic and 34 and 36 different genetic fingerprints were obtained with SSRs and SNPs, respectively. When combining both markers all accessions but two had different genetic profiles. Although on average SSRs were more informative than SNPs, with a higher number of alleles, genotypes and polymorphic information content (PIC), and expected heterozygosity ( H e ) values, SNPs have proved highly informative in our materials. Low observed heterozygosity ( H o ) and high fixation index (f) values confirm the high degree of homozygosity of eggplants. Genetic identities within groups of each complex were higher than with groups of other complexes, although differences in the ranks of genetic identity values among groups were observed between SSR and SNP markers. For low and intermediate values of pair-wise SNP genetic distances, a moderate correlation between SSR and SNP genetic distances was observed (r 2 = 0.592), but for high SNP genetic distances the correlation was low (r 2 = 0.080). The differences among markers resulted in different phenogram topologies, with a different eggplant complex being basal (gboma eggplant for SSRs and brinjal eggplant for SNPs) to the two others. Overall the results reveal that both types of markers are complementary for eggplant fingerprinting and that interpretation of relationships among groups may be greatly affected by the type of marker used.