The use of polymorphic microsatellites for assessing genetic diversity in coconut

Microsatellites, or Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs) are short tandemly repeated sequence motifs of circa 1–8 bp in length, which are scattered in abundance throughout the genome and can vary between individuals in repeat length. High frequencies of polymorphism have been described for microsatellites in cultivated and natural populations of several plant species (Morgante and Olivieri, 1993; Saghai-Maroof et al., 1994; Chase et al., 1996; Gupta et al., 1996; Powell et al., 1996) making them attractive markers for studies of intraspecific variation.