identification of ssr markers associated with resistance to potato virus y in tobacco germplasm

potato virus y (pvy) is one of the most important pathogenic agents that reduce the yield and quality of tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l.). dna-based molecular markers are valuable tools for identifying germplasm in gene banks, assessing kinship ties, and doing marker-assisted selection (mas) for resistance to pests, diseases, and some crop traits of interest. this work presents the results of association analysis for resistance to pvy with ssr markers. a total number of 66 alleles were detected using 26 ssr primer pairs on 90 oriental-type tobacco genotypes with an average of 2.54 alleles per locus. a model-based bayesian approach was used to subdivide 90 tobacco genotypes into three subgroups. approximately 5.85% of the 325 ssr locus pairs showed a significant level of linkage disequilibrium (ld) (p < 0.01). by using glm procedure, 3 loci (pt30260, pt30046 and pt30061) from linkage groups 8a, 6, and 11 of the tobacco reference map were identified to associate with resistance to pvy in a 10% probability level (p ≤ 0.0615, 0.0839, and 0.072, respectively). ssr locus pt30260 (p ≤ 0.077) was also detected with the mixed linear model (mlm) accounting for population structure and kinship relatedness (q+k model). linked-resistant ssr markers can be used as indicators of pvy resistance and interest in marker-assisted selection (mas) in tobacco breeding programs.