Unveiling the demographic background and genetic diversity of Urochloa mosambicensis (Poaceae) through genome-wide identification of simple sequence repeats and molecular marker development

The first set of simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers for Urochloa mosambicensis (Hack.) Dandy is described in this study. SSRs were isolated from a genomic library with 3491 contigs obtained by high-throughput sequencing. Primers were designed for twenty loci, and all primer pairs were successfully amplified in 39 genotypes, yielding an average of 4.95 alleles per locus. The mean polymorphic information content (PIC) was 0.559, and the mean discriminating power (DP) was 0.520 for all loci considering also all U. mosambicensis genotypes. The non-Bayesian clustering analysis has confirmed clustering consistency of the individuals and provides enough support for the existence of the pattern that also emerged from PCoA and UPGMA. These markers demonstrated potential transferability to U. advena, U. oligotricha, U. brachyura and U. xantholeuca. Our findings showed that the set of molecular markers described here have strong potential for fingerprinting and characterizing genetic diversity in intra-specific plant collections, whose breeding programs could be accelerated by the effective use of these molecular tools, not only in U. mosambicensis, but also within the genus Urochloa.