Development of SSR markers for typing cultivars in the mushroom Auricularia auricula-judae

Auricularia auricula-judae, also known as black wood ear, is one of the most popular edible mushrooms in China. But the confusion about cultivars has limited the development of A. auricula-judae production. In this article, 17 polymorphic SSR markers were cloned and used to differentiate the cultivars of A. auricula-judae. The polymorphism information content (PIC) of these SSR ranged from 0.10 to 0.84, while the average was 0.47. The number of alleles detected for each locus was 2–11, with an average of 4.7 alleles per locus. The dendrogram, based on 17 SSR markers by UPGMA clustering, could differentiate the 16 A. auricula-judae cultivars in this study. In fact, the 16 cultivars analyzed in this study could be efficiently differentiated using a combination of three polymorphic SSR loci with high PIC. The total of 17 polymorphic SSR loci could also be amplified correctly in the A. polytricha strains surveyed. This is the first report on the development of SSR markers in the genus Auricularia.