Characterization and evaluation of microsatellite loci in European hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) and their transferability to other Corylus species

In this work, 18 microsatellite loci were developed in the European hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) using three enriched genomic libraries. They were evaluated on a set of 20 accessions of this species on the basis of number of alleles (mean: 7.1), expected heterozygosity (mean: 0.67), power of discrimination (mean: 0.77) and polymorphism information content (mean: 0.64). Cross-species transferability was evaluated using seven other Corylus species. All primer pairs amplified in all species, except for CaT-C505 in Corylus ferox and CaT-A114 in Corylus californica.