Evaluation of 15 caespitose bamboo EST‐SSR markers for cross‐species/genera transferability and ability to identify interspecies hybrids

With 1 figure and 1 table Abstract Public sequence databases provide a convenient and inexpensive resource for the rapid development of microsatellite markers. We analysed 3406 publically available expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from caespitose bamboo species (Bambusa edulis and B. oldhamii) and found 245 non‐redundant simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in 205 EST contigs that were used to develop 15 EST‐SSR markers. The transferability of the markers was 59.6% among 14 additional caespitose bamboo species (4 within the same genus and 10 in other genera) and Phyllostachys pubescens. The successfully transferred markers showed 51.4% polymorphism. Markers BOM01 and BOM02 transferred successfully to most of the caespitose bamboo species showed rich polymorphism, and are therefore potentially valuable as species‐specific alleles for the identification of caespitose bamboo interspecies hybrids.