Cross species/genera transferability of simple sequence repeat markers, genetic diversity and population structure analysis in gladiolus ( L.) genotypes.

Background: Genetic analysis of gladiolus germplasm using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers is largely missing due to scarce genomic information. Hence, microsatellites identified for related genera or species may be utilized to understand the genetic diversity and assess genetic relationships among cultivated gladiolus varieties.

Methods: In the present investigation, we screened 26 genomic SSRs (, , ), 14 chloroplast SSRs spp, chloroplast DNA regions and 25 Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) derived SSRs across the 84 gladiolus ( L.