Sample Preservation and Plant Sex Prediction in White Guinea Yam ( Dioscorea rotundata Poir.) Seedlings

Abstract

Methods: for high-quality DNA extraction and knowledge of sex expression and flowering time are essential for applying genomic-assisted breeding and improve the success with hybridization in Guinea yam. A dioecious or monoecious pattern of flowering and sometimes non-flowering is a common phenomenon within and between the Dioscorea species. The flowering in yam plants raised from botanical seeds often takes an extended period, mostly till the first clonal generation after propagation from the tubers. The prolonged process of testing required to identify plant sex and flowering intensity in yam breeding often poses a challenge to realize reduced breeding cycle and apply genomic selection. This study assessed sample preservation methods for DNA quality during extraction and potential of DNA marker to diagnose plant sex at the early seedling stage in white Guinea yam. The predicted sex at the seedling stage was further validated with the visual score for the sex phenotype at the flowering stage. DNA extracted from leaf samples preserved in liquid nitrogen, silica gel, dry ice, and oven drying methods was similar in quality with a high molecular weight than samples stored in ethanol solution. Yam plant sex diagnosis with the DNA marker (sp16) identified a higher proportion of ZW genotypes (female or monoecious phenotypes) than the ZZ genotypes (male phenotype) in the studied materials with 74% prediction accuracy. The results from this study provided valuable insights on suitable sample preservation methods for quality DNA extraction and the potential of DNA marker sp16 to predict sex in white Guinea yam.

Plant phenotyping relevance

ヤムの性表現型を幼苗段階でDNAマーカーにより予測し、開花期の視覚的性表現型で検証しているため、単なる生物学的測定ではなく植物表現型推定法の開発・検証が中心です。

Code and data availability

The paper reports yam sex phenotyping/genotyping results and mentions a supplementary Table S1 with the phenotype-vs-marker comparison, but no public repository, dataset URL, code deposit, or authors' public asset link is provided in any supplied block. The only URL mentioned (www.yambase.org) is a cited ontology/pheny

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.