The first genetic maps of cashew (Anacardium occidentale L.)

Cashew (Anacardium occidentale) is a widespread tropical tree crop that is grown primarily for its nuts and has a global production of over 2 million Mt. In spite of its economic importance to many countries, however, no linkage map containing STS anchor sites has yet been produced for this species. This is largely attributable to a prolonged juvenile phase of the tree (limiting mapping to F₁ progenies) and difficulty in effecting sufficient hand-pollinations to create mapping populations of effective size. Here, we produce an F₁ mapping population of 85 individuals from a cross between CP 1001 (dwarf commercial clone) and CP 96 (giant genotype), and use it to generate two linkage genetic maps comprising of 205 genetic markers (194 AFLP and 11 SSR markers). The female map (CP 1001) contains 122 markers over 19 linkage groups and the male map (CP 96) comprises 120 markers assembled over 23 linkage groups. The total map distance of the female map is 1050.7 cM representing around 68% genome coverage, whereas the male map spans 944.7 cM (64% coverage). The average map distance between markers is 8.6 cM in the female map and 7.9 cM in the male map. Homology between the two maps was established between 13 linkage groups of the female map and 14 of the male map using 46 bridging markers that include 11 SSR markers. These maps represent a platform from which to identify loci controlling economically important traits in this crop.