2018 ASHS Annual Conference

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea L., 2n=2x=12) is an economically important vegetable crop worldwide and one of the healthiest vegetables due to its high concentrations of nutrients and health-promoting compounds. Currently, there are about 400 spinach (S. oleracea) accessions in USDA-GRIN. Because spinach is a dioecious species, it is hard to keep each accession as an inbred line and also hard to determine its purity and uniquity. We develop a 24-SNP set used to spinach germplasm determination to detect and distinguish each spinach accession for USDA germplasm accessions. Based on our genetic diversity analysis among the 400 accessions using SNPs postulated from whole genome resequencing (WGR) and genotyping by sequencing (GBS) data, we select 6 SNPs distributed evenly on each of the six chromosomes in the spinach genome to form a total of 24 SNP set. Using this SNP set, we can detect and determine each accession among the 400 accessions and also this SNP set can be used to determine commercial spinach hybrids, opened-pollinated cultivars, and Arkansas spinach lines.