A SCAR marker for identifying susceptibility to Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense in banana

•Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense causes Fusarium wilt (Panama disease) in banana.•A SCAR marker was developed for marker-assisted selection of resistant plants.•The marker was validated and the result was congruent with the field reaction.•Future selection of genotypes can be made with the application of the SCAR marker.•This procedure speeds up genotype selection since it does not rely on inoculation.

Fusarium wilt (also known as Panama disease) caused by Fusarium oxysporum Schlechtend. f. sp. cubense (E.F. Smith) W.C. Snyder & H.N. Hansen (Foc) is an endemic disease in all banana (Musa spp. L.) producing areas. The use of resistant cultivars is the recommended method for the disease control. The development of resistant or tolerant cultivars is expensive and time-consuming since the results must be confirmed by many years of field evaluation. In this situation, DNA markers show a great potential to improve the efficiency and precision of conventional plant breeding. Thus, the objective of this work was to develop a SCAR marker able to discriminate between resistant and susceptible genotypes to Foc infection. Using genomic DNA from resistant or susceptible genotypes and 78 × 10-mer arbitrary primers, one RAPD band associated to susceptibility was selected and used to generate the SCAR marker SuscPD-F/SuscPD-R. This marker was validated on 28 banana cultivars which were resistant or susceptible to infection by Foc. The results indicated a high degree of specificity of the marker, which was able to discriminate between the two contrasting groups (resistant or susceptible). The discriminatory power of the new marker was 93%.