Quantitative Genotyping for the Astringency Locus in Hexaploid Persimmon Cultivars using Quantitative Real-time PCR

Persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.) is generally hexaploid, and a single AST locus controls the pollination-constant non-astringency trait on each of six corresponding chromosomes. The pollination-constant non-astringent (PCNA) genotype is nulliplex and requires homozygous recessive alleles (ast) at the AST locus. There are several non-PCNA cultivars/selections that could be cross parents; however, the probability of yielding nulliplex offspring depends on the number of recessive alleles (ast). In genotyping for the AST locus in hexaploid persimmon, in contrast to the situation in diploid plants, we need to detect the AST/ast allele dosage; this cannot be detected by common codominant markers. In this study, we detected the allele dosage of M-ast, which is a marker allele strongly linked to the ast allele among cultivars, by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) using three reference sites, actin (DkAct), anthocyanin reductase (DkANR), and L5R, whose sequences are conserved in the genome of persimmon cultivars. Based on the allele dosage of the M-ast, AST/ast genotypes were estimated for 63 non-astringent cultivars/selections, of which only five cultivars/selections were estimated to be simplex or duplex. The quantitative genotyping method using qPCR may be generally effective for polyploid plants.