MSc.

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) known as ‘Chocolate tree’, is a major cash crop in tropical countries. Cocoa production is seriously affected by pod rot diseases caused by many Phytophthora species. Among these, the pod rot caused by Phytophthora palmivora has been reported in India. Yearly losses to the cocoa growers around the world from Phytophthora diseases were assessed at 30 per cent of the total yield loss. Disease resistance can be scored using a number of morphological and physiological characters. However, the morpho-physiological characters greatly depend upon the environment which ultimately affect the experimental data. Hence, confirmation of transfer of genes by tagging with the help of a strong tool is of utmost importance in crop breeding. Molecular markers such as Inter simple sequence repeats (ISSRs) have already proven to be a good tool to detect and tag the genes of interest and will help to reduce the breeding cycle. In this context, the present study was taken up with an objective to develop a strategy to tag gene(s) for Phytophthora pod rot (PPR) resistance in cocoa using ISSR markers.
Morphological characterization of 28 hybrid progenies of SVI 1.26 × PII 12.11 was carried out by recording five pod and bean characters. High variability was observed for characters viz., pod weight, pod length and breadth, wet bean weight per pod and single dry bean weight among the progeny of the same cross. Detached pod inoculation technique was adopted to classify the hybrids into resistant and susceptible ones. The wide variability was also recorded for disease reaction among the progenies. Based on the resistance score, three resistant and three susceptible hybrids were selected from the segregating progeny.
The eight accessions were screened with fifty ISSR and 15 SSR primers to observe polymorphism between resistance and susceptible genotypes. Polymorphism was observed in 11 ISSR primers and from these, six primers viz., UBC 810, UBC 826, UBC 827, UBC 857, Oligo ISSR 04 and Oligo ISSR 08 were eluted and cloned. Plasmid DNA was isolated from clones and sequenced. Though various SSR primer sets screened were found to yield polymorphism, none of them was successful to give a clear distinction among the resistant and susceptible hybrids. This may be due to the fact that, Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with these reported SSR primers may be absent in the genotypes considered for the study.
BLASTn analysis specific to plants was done for all six sequences. Upon analysis, Oligo ISSR 04561 had shown 98 per cent identity with Predicted: T. cacao histidine-containing phosphotransfer protein 1 (HPt). HPts play an important role in propagating cytokinin signal transduction. Cytokinins are instrumental in mediating disease resistance by generating a green island around the infection zones, exhibiting delayed leaf senescence and upregulating the expression of the pathogenesis related (PR) gene/s. In addition to this, the auxin-cytokinin antagonism that occurs as part of a complex hormonal interplay, exerts a critical influence on the core SA-JA/ET plant immunity pathways. The BLASTn analysis of marker UBC 810877 resulted in 99 per cent sequence identity with Predicted: T. cacao phospholipid: diacylglycerol acyltransferase (PDAT) 1 mRNA. This protein regulates the synthesis of triacylglycerol, which is a building component of oils in the plant. Accumulation of oil content in plant cells could impart resistance against the pathogen. UBC 827571 had shown 73 per cent sequence identity with T. cacao clone TCC_BA049P20 complete sequence and it is reported to be QTL rich region associated with different traits of T. cacao.
Moreover, ISSR markers UBC 810877, UBC 826535 and UBC 857839 are located on chromosome nine, six and four respectively as inferred from NCBI Genome Data Viewer tool through BLASTn annotations. These markers are found to be located in PPR resistance regions rich in defense associated genes.
Further validation and exploitation of polymorphic amplicons or markers in response to PPR would be required. The linkage of Oligo ISSR 04561 and UBC 810877 with HPts and PDAT correspondingly have to be validated to elucidate the association and role of cytokinin and triacylglycerol with PPR disease resistance. If validated, UBC 810877, UBC 826535 and UBC 857839 and Oligo ISSR 04561 could be employed as a marker in PPR resistance breeding programmes in cocoa.