Summary

This project will investigate the likelihood of cultivar identification among 31 cultivars of Australia’s predominant pasture legume, subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.) to tackle challenges for Australian pasture and livestock industries. A unique opportunity exists to exploit knowledge of elite marker development for cultivar identification in subterranean clover. Elite microsatellite markers or simple sequence repeats (SSRs) will be used to screen 31 cultivars and discrimante them based on markers alleles. This will be follwed by within cultivar variation screening. At the final stage, seed purity for each cultivar will be tested using a selected subset of these markers.

Program

Pasture Seeds

Research Organisation

Gin Silico Pty Ltd

Objective Summary

1. To capture molecular variation within and between cultivars of subterranean clover for in farm utilisation and efficiency.
2. To quantify seed purity/inpurity in subterranean clover seed collections.
3. To develop a rapid method for early cultivar identification.
4. To identify the smallest subset of the elite markers with the capability to discriminate among maximum number of cultivars.