Development of EST-SSR Microsattelite Markers Related to Drought Tolerance in Lentile (lens culinaris)

Lentil (Lens culinaris) is one of the important grain legumes in feeding (as protein-reach food) and industry (such as biopolymer industry) and the problem of lower yield of this plant in Iran rather than average global yield is affected by exposure of plant to environmental stresses especially drought. Identification of molecular markers that closely linked to drought resistant genes help to implementation of breeding programs aimed at the production of drought tolerant plants. The gol of this study was identification of EST-SSR markers which closely linked to the genes involved in drought resistance and use of these information in identification of drought resistant genotypes in breeding programs. PEG was used for stress treatment, and after conduction of treatments, leaf samples were collected. Total RNA was extracted and cDNA libraries were sequenced. Results showed that 10546 (16%) of uni-genes contained at least one EST-SSR and about 27.5% of these sequences were annotated. Among different SSR motif-classes, tri-nucleotide repeats (46.03%) were the most abundant followed by mono-nucleotide repeats (37.25%) and di-nucleotide repeats (15.18%). The results of the functional annotation of these sequences, showed that the highest number of EST-SSRs were belonged to subgroups of binding (872), catalytic activity (806), metabolic processes (755), and cell components (651), respectively.The results showed that genes associated with these markers, involved in important biological functions and are an appropriate tool for study the genes involved in tolerance to stresses including drought stress.