TITLE:
Identification of Large Deletion of Ccs Responsible for Non-Red Fruit Color in Pepper (Capsicum annuum) and Development of DNA Marker to Distinguish the Deletion
AUTHORS:
Shiho Omori, Tsuneo Sasanuma
KEYWORDS:
Non-Red Fruit Pepper, Ccs, Identification of Large Deletion, ccs-3, Development of DNA Marker
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.13 No.9,
September
21,
2022
ABSTRACT: Chili pepper (Capsicum spp.) fruit color is an important agronomical trait. It has been known that a
large deletion in the 5' upstream region of the Ccs gene generates
non-red fruit color in pepper, but the accurate size and position of the
deletion and whether all the non-red cultivars had the same large deletion or
not were unclarified. In this study, to identify the Ccs upstream large
deletion, we carried out diagnostic PCR using six forward primers at 300 - 900
bp intervals in the 5' untranslated region of Ccs with a fixed reverse
primer for a yellow fruit pepper “Sonia Gold”. Then it was revealed that 4430
bp from -3234 bp position in upstream region to 1196 bp position in exon was
deleted in Ccs of “Sonia Gold”. The allele having this deletion was named ccs-del. Probably this allele is
substantially the same as ccs-p1 having 4879 bp
deletion reported previously. Based on the sequence determined, we developed a
PCR marker to distinguish ccs-del. Genotyping of 16 cultivars of C. annuum showed that 14 had ccs-del and the remaining two had another
mutant allele ccs-3. This result indicates that ccs-del is the most common allele and widely shared in non-red fruit cultivars in C. annuum. Genotyping of 16 cultivars of C. chinense clarified that one
cultivar each possessed ccs-del and ccs-3. These results
indicate that major alleles responsible for
non-red fruit color in C. annuum were shared across species throughout interspecific introgression.