Introgression potential between safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) and wild relatives of the genus Carthamus.

Background: Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius, is a thistle that is grown commercially for the production of oil and birdseed and recently, as a host for the production of transgenic pharmaceutical proteins. C. tinctorius can cross with a number of its wild relatives, creating the possibility of gene flow from safflower to weedy species.

Development of molecular markers and linkage maps for the Carthamus species C. tinctorius and C. oxyacanthus.

A set of SSR and RFLP markers for safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) and jeweled distaff thistle (C. oxyacanthus) was generated from cDNA and genomic libraries and by mining public and proprietary sequence databases. In total, 1412 PCR-based markers and 75 RFLP markers were screened and polymorphic loci were mapped in an intraspecific F2 population of C.

Complexities of chromosome landing in a highly duplicated genome: toward map-based cloning of a gene controlling blackleg resistance in Brassica napus.

The LmR1 locus, which controls seedling resistance to the blackleg fungus Leptosphaeria maculans in the Brassica napus cultivar Shiralee, was positioned on linkage group N7. Fine genetic mapping in a population of 2500 backcross lines identified three molecular markers that cosegregated with LmR1. Additional linkage mapping in a second population colocalized a seedling resistance gene, ClmR1, from the cultivar Cresor to the same genetic interval on N7 as LmR1.