Start codon targeted (SCoT) variability analysis and its association with hydroxy citric acid (HCA) in Garcinia gummi-gutta (L.) Roxb.

Hydroxycitric acid (HCA) is one of the proven natural antiobesity agents enriched in the fruits of Garcinia gummi-gutta (L.) Roxb. (Family: Clusiaceae). The present research work was carried out to evaluate the genetic variability among 35 candidate plus trees (CPTs) using HCA estimated through HPLC and start codon targeted (SCoT) molecular markers. The association analysis between phenotypic and genotypic traits was also conducted. The selected CPTs showed an average HCA content of 29.11 mg/g and Gar 17 had the highest (48.32 mg/g) followed by Gar 6 (45.48 mg/g). SCoT marker analysis revealed that 19 primers, out of 30 yielded a total of 151 bands with 66.89% polymorphic bands. Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) organized the CPTs into the four quadrants of a scatterplot irrespective of HCA content. Dendrogram based on neighbour joining method proved its reproducibility by its bootstrapping values, and it has three clusters. STRUCTURE analysis opened the probability of two assumed subpopulations within the selected individuals. Association analysis based on a general linear model (GLM) agreed with the strong association of SCoT 5d allele with HCA content, which also supports the promising nature of Gar 6 as per previous findings. Analysis based on HCA and SCoT markers was effective in tracing out the genetic variabilities among the CPTs and the marker-trait association. The findings are the first in G. gummi-gutta, best of our knowledge.