Annals of Applied Biology ISSN 0003-4746 RESEARCH ARTICLE Use of molecular markers in participatory plant breeding: assessing the genetic variability in cotton populations bred by farmers J. Lancxon1,2, J.-P. Pichaut1, M. Djaboutou2, S. Lewicki-Dhainaut1,2, C. Viot1 & J.-M. Lacape1 1 CIRAD, Centre de Coope´ ration Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le De´ veloppement, 34398, Montpellier Cedex 5, France 2 INRAB, Institut National de Recherches Agricoles du Be´ nin, CRA Coton et Fibres, 01 BP715, Cotonou, Be´ nin Keywords Abstract AFLP and SSR markers; decentralised breeding; mass selection. In participatory plant breeding, farmers are involved in simple selection schemes that are not suitable for assessing genetic variability in the segregating populations. Correspondence We propose to use information derived from molecular marker analyses to help J.-M. Lacape, Centre Coope´ ration Internatio- monitoring such populations. In this study, we used three indicators to compare nale en Recherche Agronomique pour le genetic variability in eight genetic structures, that is three plant populations De´ veloppement, Avenue Agropolis, BP 5035, selected by farmers over five generations, three nonselected populations and 34032 Montpellier Cedex, France. two commercial varieties. The three indicators were the polymorphic locus rate, Email:
[email protected] heterozygosity rate and dissimilarity index. The results highlighted that the genetic Received: 7 April 2007; revised version variability decreased more with farmers’ selection than with environmental fac- accepted: 29 September 2007. tors. The breeding process was not complete because genetic variability in the selected populations was midway between that of the nonselected populations doi:10.1111/j.1744-7348.2007.00197.x and that of the commercial varieties monitored.